Red and White, But Where’s the Blue?
D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier's community-policing offensive apparently went on holiday around Independence Day. Residents across the city flooded the department with complaints about illegal fireworks popping off around them. According to 4th District Commander Hilton B. Burton, officers in his area responded to as many as 25 calls an hour starting around sundown on the Fourth and stretching into the wee hours of the next day. But Burton's foot soldiers made no arrests.
"Generally, we don't arrest people for shooting off firecrackers on the Fourth of July," says Burton.
Petworth resident Keith Jarrell didn't see any cruisers on his block. "In all honesty, there is just no way 25 calls per hour were responded to. I just don't believe it," says Jarrell, who said he dialed police three times between July 2 and 4.
Officials did make an effort, however, to crack down on illegal sales. A federal/local task force made 14 arrests citywide for possession or distribution of "quarter sticks," "M80s," bottle rockets, and other illegal exploding devices and projectiles. In all, officials seized fireworks with a street value of as much as $100,000, says D.C. Fire Department spokesman Tony Dorsey.
---Christine MacDonald
Comments
Leave a Reply
You can follow any responses to this entry through its comments RSS feed.
12:45 pm
I am sure popping off fireworks is a misdemeanor, which means the DC cops actually have to see the fireworks being popped off to make an arrest. Which is unlikely unless the miscreant is the host of a backyard/block party and can't scoot away around the corner as soon as sirens are heard or a kindly friend lets him know a silent cop car has just entered the block.
Even if the miscreant is found among strewn around detritus of illegal fireworks, unless a witness is willing to make a citizens arrest on his/her own formal complaint that them miscreant did, indeed, set off illegal fireworks, the police are powerless to proceed further, since they didn't see the misdemeanor being committed.
That's why the police "generally don't arrest people ...," they can't, legally, unless they see the misdemeanor crime as it happens. Apparently Christine Macdonald feels it is productive for the police to scream around the city from one empty block where fireworks had been set off to another, 25 times an hour, in the hopes of scaring off the kids, adult or juvenile, doing it from doing it again.
[