Jose Ayala grabs a soft drink to sell along Jefferson Avenue in Dallas. Ayala, a Dallas area ice cream vendor, or paletero, sometimes carries a baseball bat when making his rounds because vendors are vulnerable to robbery.

DALLAS — Jose Ayala often carries a baseball bat in his pushcart to fend off robbers.

Deep scars mark the back of Pablo Arellano’s head from the last time he was beaten.

And recently, a 79-year-old man was kicked in the shoulder so hard it seemed to be dislocated.

For paleteros — Spanish for ice cream vendors — the job isn’t always sweet.

“We are lost,” Ayala said during a recent interview in Oak Cliff, the Dallas neighborhood where he usually makes his sales. “We are at the mercy of robbers any time they want.”

Dallas police Detective Gilberto Martinez knows that’s true. Paleteros usually work alone, pushing their tiny carts well into the night. Though they carry little money, the nature of their job puts them at risk of being beaten, robbed or worse.

“For a measly $15, I could have gotten killed,” a vendor once told Martinez.

Although the number of ice cream vendor-related robberies has dropped in recent years, police say many go unreported. Dallas police say it is difficult to accurately track attacks on the vendors because so many of the victims fail to report them and some of those that are reported aren’t necessarily listed specifically as assaults on ice cream vendors.

“There are other victims out there,” said Martinez, who works in the southwest investigative unit, which includes Oak Cliff, where many paleteros work and are victimized. “But they don’t want to do anything.”

Dallas police officials said it is unclear exactly how many paletero robberies are reported each year because ice cream vendor-related cases are not consistently flagged in their police report system. So far this year, police records indicate there are about 11 robberies listed under the name of ice cream shops in Dallas.

Many more go unreported, Martinez said, because most paleteros are illegal immigrants and fear being deported. But police won’t pursue an ice cream vendor who comes forward with information just because he is undocumented, the detective said.

“Don’t be afraid of us. We don’t care about your status,” Martinez said. “We care about these guys that are committing these wrongdoings.”

Another reason vendors don’t come forward is that many of them emigrate from Mexico, where authorities are often corrupt, Martinez said.

“It’s not Mexico. It’s the United States,” he said. “You have rights.”

Omar Gallegos, 35, is one of the few paleteros who did come forward. An ice cream vendor for two years, he called 911 when he was robbed at gunpoint on June 9.

Last week, Gallegos detailed the robbery to Martinez as the two sat inside Gallegos’ Oak Cliff home.

Gallegos said a man driving a beige Isuzu stopped his car next to his cart. The man got out of the car and showed Gallegos his gun.

“I’m going to shoot you if you don’t give me your money,” the man said.

Fearing for his life, Gallegos gave him the $45 in his pocket. Gallegos quit the job days later but said he did so because of the heat, not because of the robbery.

Although police have not caught the robber, Martinez said just getting Gallegos — or any paletero — to talk to police was a big step.

“Just sitting down with that paletero doesn’t happen very often,” the detective said moments after the interview.

In 2005, police said there was a string of ice cream vendor-related robberies in the city, including one in which 28-year-old Alfonso Fuentes, an Oak Cliff vendor, was shot and killed by a 14-year-old boy. Joel Zubiri was convicted of capital murder in April 2006 and sentenced to life in prison.

To fight back against the attacks, Gerardo Monreal, then a southwest neighborhood police officer, launched a program to protect ice cream vendors.

As part of the initiative, Monreal and other southwest officers asked the public to donate cellphones that were later distributed to any ice cream vendor who did not own one. Police also encouraged ice cream shop owners to pay ice cream vendors if they couldn’t work because they were testifying in court.

“It made it easier for them to see or view the police as a friend and as a person that was out there to help them,” Monreal said.

By 2007, Monreal was transferred to the Dallas police media relations office. That year, the number of paletero robberies “just really dropped,” Monreal said. After he left, though, no one took over the program and it no longer exists.

Dallas police Sgt. Saul Sarmiento said last week that it wouldn’t hurt to revive the program.

“It would be a good idea as far as being proactive,” Sarmiento said.

But for paleteros such as Pablo Arellano, who is hard of hearing, a cellphone offers little help.

“Because I can’t hear well, I haven’t really wanted to buy a cellphone,” said Arellano, who said he makes about $50 a day.

An ice cream vendor for 25 years, Arellano said he has been robbed about six times. The last time was three years ago, when he was beaten and hospitalized.

Someone tried to rob Ayala last month, but he said he used the bat he sometimes carries to fend them off. Ayala said he often works until 8:30 p.m. because he makes more sales after sundown.

“In the morning, who is going to buy an ice cream bar?” he said.

The earnings vary by ice cream vendor, but are usually about $60 a day, said Raul Rodriguez, president of Frutitas, an Oak Cliff ice cream shop.

In past years, his shop has had about 20 vendors at a time. But this year there are only three because people fear working in the streets, he said. When his vendors go out to work, Rodriguez offers them all the same advice: Hand over the money if you are robbed.

“Life is worth more than what they can take from us,” Rodriguez said.