Recommendation to receive and file a report from City Manager on the status of the citywide coordinated effort around the prevention and enforcement of illegal fireworks in Long Beach before and after the 4th of July holiday.
Communication. Excuse. Excuse me. Was was item eight pulled? It was not. Was not. Thank you. Communication from Councilmember Richardson, Councilman Price, Councilmember Odinga and Councilmember Austin recommendation to receive and file a report on the prevention and enforcement of illegal fireworks in Long Beach. Council Member Richardson. Thank you, Vice Mayor. We're about six weeks out from the 4th of July. And as we know, the amount of illegal fireworks in our neighborhoods seem to be at record levels last year. I know that many of our council offices and the mayor's offices received complaints from social media and through our offices. I know that there have been a number of measures taken by a number of us, both council members and city departments. So my hope is that we we receive an update tonight and also have a better understanding on what our proactive approach will be heading into the 4th of July and any changes or updates that we might that might be taking place this year that we can help to educate or make aware to our our our constituents. So at that, at this point, I'd like to just hear from hear from city staff. Okay. Can yes. Vice mayor council members will have a report representing the police department in the fire department, representing the fire department as our lifeguard chief, Gonzalo Medina. Representing the police department is Deputy Chief Rich Rocky. And they'll follow off a report that was sent to the city council later on this later this afternoon. So rich or Gonzalo? Good evening, Vice Mayor. Council members. Good evening, Vice, by our council members. As in previous years, the fire department will coordinate with, coordinate public service announcements, press releases, and utilize the distribution of educational materials, communicating that all fireworks are dangerous and illegal in the city of Long Beach. This message will be communicated through a variety of media, including social media, television, electronic signage and the posting of fliers, banners and posters in the highly visible locations. Educational information will also be shared and distributed in Long Beach schools, and our CERT team or Community Emergency Response Team made up of volunteers will help distribute this information as well. Relating to that, all fireworks are legal in Long Beach. Additionally, this year, the fire department will speak at community meetings and events such as concerts in the park about the illegality and the dangers of fireworks. The fire department will have its full staff of four arson investigators out through July 2nd and fourth in tandem with our police department and. And I'm open for questions, sir. Thank you. So just one quick question and then I want to hear from our colleagues, because I know there's significant interest and I know that a number of council members have let me know that they're already doing work on this. So, number one, I'd like to have a better understanding on what our fine structure is and whether we we've actually handed out fines in recent years and whether we plan to, you know, educate people on what that fine what that what that fine structure is moving forward. That would be my only question at this point then. And then I'm finished. Honorable Vice Mayor, members of city council. Yes. So the fine structure is something that is capped and it's capped at $1,000. And that is something that is governed by the California government code and cannot be changed by local government. As far as our citations, we do write citations each year for the use illegal use of fireworks, both illegal fireworks and safe and sane fireworks. And last year, in 2015, although these numbers may not seem like they're a lot, they seem quite low. We wrote 50 citations during the 4th of July holiday season with six arrests, so a total of 56 the year prior in 2014. Those citations were 65, with four arrests for a total of 49. And then in 2013 was our lowest out of the three years, with seven arrests, 42 citations, and with a total of 49. I would like to point out that in addition to the sites that are written, the police and fire department last year collectively confiscated £650 of illegal fireworks and £60 of safe and sane fireworks. So that is something that we do work together collectively to continue to impact our illegal fireworks within the city. Don't remember your anger. Thank you, Mayor. I want to thank Councilmember Richardson for bringing this forward. Every year it seems that we're getting worse and worse. It's like sounds like a war zone out there. I represent to the west now each area and it seems like the West Palm Beach area gets the has a high incidence of these types of activities . One of the questions that I have is and it's my understanding that the police department might be called out to a site where activity is taking place. But once they get there, the perpetrators are either move away or go inside or remove themselves from that activity. And and the police department is held with with not being able to do anything because they didn't see anything. Is is there any kind of additional rule or ordinance, law, whatever that can that can be held against these individuals, even though they might not be caught in the act? But there might be evidence that fireworks activity was taking place that would serve enough as evidence to confiscate the fireworks or to give a citation. Councilmember Younger. Yes. As far as enforcing the laws, you are correct. It's very difficult for us to identify and end up citing those who do light off illegal fireworks, because the law requires that our officers witness the person who is actually lighting the firework and then being able to cite that person if they don't run from us prior to us being able to detain them. Most of these occur at night, again and in groups again, making it difficult for for officers. However, witnesses who do see people lighting off fireworks and want to be involved can call the police and can identify those who are lighting off that firework and place them under a private person's arrest. They would be required to fill out that private person's arrest form, and then we could cite that person who lit up that firework if they are still there when when the police arrive. And we could give them a cite based off the private person arrest form and the observations of the citizen. Anything short of that? It's very difficult for us to do any enforcement action unless someone wants to be involved and be that witness. With these forms, be something that can be acquired ahead of time. Or can a citizen fill it out right at that right at that point with an officer present at that point right there. What's what what would be the procedure on doing such a such an activity? Councilman, during a we do keep those forms with our police officers. There is a process with that form that our officer does have to read the person and admonition and then they sign that private person's arrest form. But all our officers in the field do have that form with them and will present them to the citizen at the time they contact them for that private person's arrest form if they so choose to do that. Thank you. Councilwoman Pryce. Thank you very much. I want to thank Councilman Richardson for bringing this important discussion forward. We all know, and as he stated, that the 4th of July holiday is is right around the corner. And we need to have a good functioning coordination among our multiple departments if we're going to have any sort of impact on the use of illegal fireworks. After numerous complaints to the city and council offices as well as the mayor's office. Last year, the Public Safety Committee actually took this item up for discussion and requested that the fireworks steering committee reconvene. In past years, the city led an effort to inform the public on the dangers of fireworks and fire that and informing them that fireworks are illegal in the city of Long Beach. Fireworks Steering Committee met on a regular basis beginning in the month of March through the 4th of July holiday, in an effort to be proactive with fireworks, education and enforcement. A number of city departments participated in the committee, including City Council, Harbor, Public Works, Fire Police and Special Events and filming. The committee was responsible for such tasks as creating public service announcements and videos, press releases, distributing multilingual fliers, posting banners and signs, electronic messages, public education in schools, and notifying block party permit holders that fireworks are illegal. This year, the fireworks steering committee held its first meeting on April 20th, which my office participated in. It is my understanding that Fire and Police Department are working on a list of proactive measures that we can take. We've discussed some of those tonight to curb the use of illegal fireworks in the city. There is going to be a cost associated with this. And I don't know if either of the representatives are in a position to give us an estimate of what that cost will be. But I know that last year the outreach efforts were funded at a much lower level than prior years. So I want to make sure that we're not setting up our police and fire departments to fail by asking them to do public outreach without giving them the resources that they need to do it right. It was a significant issue last year. It always is. But it seemed that last year as as Councilman Turanga said, it's it's almost like a war zone. And that's the reports we heard from a lot of people because of the the volume and the magnitude of the fireworks that were being being used. So if you have any information about the budget, what you think it might require of you, and then perhaps the city manager can let us know whether there's any sort of funding source available for this, since this is a one time expenditure that, you know, we want to be able to fund it an accurate, adequate level. Councilwoman Pryce We do not have a funding number yet. We are in the process of putting together our operational plan for this year's firework strategies, and I'll talk a little bit about what those are, since that was one of the questions in your comment. And the police department is in the planning process, the fireworks enforcement for this year, beginning in early June. Some of our strategies include uniformed and plainclothes officers working in the areas of high complaints and activity impacting the supply chain. As we discover illegal sales of fireworks in our city and surrounding areas, participation of the city's firework committee to coordinate a joint education campaign which fire alluded to notifying our community of the dangers of fireworks and the enforcement of those who break the law. And within the next few weeks, our city team will push out a city police department and fire department. Joint media release use of social media to get the word out, distribution of informational information to our businesses, association stakeholders, etc. So this is truly a collaborative effort on the police and fire side for the enforcement and the city family for the education piece. May I make one recommendation that's relatively low in cost and I think it can have a huge impact. And that would be working with Long Beach Unified School District to get a flier in every middle school and high schoolers backpack meet, citing the fact that it's illegal and enumerating the penalties that are associated with a violation and then asking the superintendent if Long Beach Unified will do a robocall about it to all the parents and also send out an email blast in advance of the 4th of July holiday. I think that if children are advised that this conduct is illegal, hopefully they will remind their parents who are tempted to violate the law. And if if nothing else, the parents, knowing that the children are advised that this is illegal, might curb their behavior and that that may have a little bit of an impact in terms of outreach. We have a lot of youth who do not know that fireworks are illegal in Long Beach because some nearby cities allow fireworks. And a lot of those, those high school students are reaching adult age soon and probably experimenting with some of these entertainment options on the 4th of July. So that that would be a very low cost, I think, outreach measure. Yes. We'll include that in our outreach strategy. Thank you. Councilman Mongo. Yes. Thank you for the report. Our side of town is unusually high impact as we border one of those wonderful cities who puts firework stands literally facing the city of Long Beach, asking our residents to be wooed in to purchase fireworks from their nonprofits. So when you say highly visible, will there be a concentration of these on the border? So as people are leaving our city to go buy these fireworks and spend their money in another city that they will see said materials, and then as crossing back into our city again, realize that they are not only illegal, but dangerous especially . I know that Councilman Price and I both experienced high volumes of drilled piccolo pits, which do sound like bombs and shoot into the air and perhaps again surrounding the unincorporated area as people go from unincorporated to the city. Because I know there's some challenges in that. Literally one house is legal to do a firework and the next house on the same street in my office adjacent to my district is illegal, so I'm highly visible. I would hope that we do a lot of border and unincorporated adjacent signage, and if there's help that's needed in that area, my office would be thrilled to send out interns to place them on posts as if they are lost cat signs wherever we can. Thank you, Councilman Mongo. And I just wanted to add from the second district standpoint, it is probably the greatest number of calls that we've received this past year. You've heard this from other council members, so I'm not sure what exactly is different from all the other years, but I share the concerns that each of the council members who've spoken have shared and do believe that this is extremely critical. Whether residents know or don't know whether these whether fireworks is illegal in the city almost it seemed irrelevant this last year because I cannot imagine that many people do not know that it's not legal in this city. So I think there's a mixture of things going on. I appreciate your your persistence in this issue and the councilmembers who sponsored this item. Councilmember Richardson, thank you very much. And is there any public comment? Good evening, everyone. My name is Karen Retherford and I reside at the corner seventh and Pacific Avenue. I'm in one of those areas that's heavily impacted by the use of illegal fireworks. We're a senior building and there's a number in that area. There's a persistent group of people on Eighth Street between Pacific and Chestnut and the week before the 4th of July. It is indeed like a war zone in our particular neighborhood. I want to offer I'm on the 17th floor of the building. If we could put a camera on there and capture one of the issues is when the police come, they turn on the sirens. So as soon as they hear the sirens, they shut down and they leave. And they operate primarily with the illegal fireworks. I wouldn't be surprised, but they were selling to others within the community. This has been an ongoing problem over the last year and a half. And I know a number of our residents have placed phone calls to the police department about this, and they just can't seem to catch these guys. I have seen a gentleman standing outside and immediately following there are blasts and I'm willing to do whatever I can do to stop this. And they have my respect of ours and they have no respect of time. They not only operate around the 4th of July, they operate on a year round basis, and sometimes they set off fireworks at three in the morning. I've been awakened three or four with little blasts, and now we have flash bombs going off and people think that there meth lab explosions going on in our neighborhood. So this is an issue that I know we're willing to help however we can in terms of observation recording to get this problem resolved. Thank you. Uh, my name is William Napier, Honorable City Council and Mayor. I'm concerned about. Some fireworks around the Jergens. Building land tunnel. And the deal is if the City of Long Beach destroys Jergens Tunnel, the tunnel that made Long Beach famous, the tunnel that gave Long Beach its soul, the tunnel that everyone went through to get to the real Pike Fun Zone. What will be next? I say it will be our wetlands. Overdevelopment seems to be on our city's agenda and overpopulation seems to be on our nation's agenda. Thank you very much. And I love fireworks, but we'll let you make that decision. Hi. My name is Miranda Misek and I live along the riverbed in one of those tucked away neighborhoods. And I don't think that people aren't aware so much that it's not illegal, although the efforts of making children kind of help encourage parents to do the right thing, I think is a great idea. I'm wondering if there's been any effort in trying to work with adjacent cities to maybe when people purchase fireworks from other cities, show maybe a driver's license or something that shows the city they live in or to help kind of with the enforcement of our laws or maybe enact laws in their cities to not have fireworks. And also, I am wondering if maybe we can't help officers be eyes and ears and maybe equip those that have the authority to write citations, you know, like people that enforce parking tickets and things like that, maybe on that one night be, you know, a bigger force out in that community. Because I know that the minute the police car shows up, they all scatter, you know, so maybe if there is a way to, like, have people that aren't in uniform or people that aren't usually in uniform, just kind of patrol neighborhoods. My partner and I, we sometimes patrol our neighborhood and try to get our neighbors involved and, you know, help officers that way. Because I know you can't be everywhere and I know you do your best. But I don't think that. It's hard to spot them. I mean, they're they're very obvious when they have block parties in there. It's there. So I think that we need to get those citation numbers up, because if I got a $400 ticket or something, I sure would think twice about doing it the next year. So if there's anything we can do and if there's any kind of movement in the direction of helping other cities get involved, I think that'll be a bigger bang for your efforts. Thank you. Thank you. Tom Stout. This is a huge problem. And Wrigley, Stu, your anger is totally right on this prior to a week before. These are not just illegal fireworks. These are explosive devices. It shakes my whole house. Animals are screaming. What are their children doing? I mean, I don't know exactly how, but around between 31st and 32nd on Cedar, that's the direction these devices are going off. And I mean, they're I mean, it shakes my whole house. So everybody's being affected, you know, safe and saying, I don't know there is saying as some of the idiots that use them so you know that's debatable. But you know, I grew up with firecrackers and manatees. That was the device for sort of opening up toilets in high schools at one time. And these things would destroy the whole bathroom. I don't know what they are, but I know people do also fill up balloons with propane and they're in a hell of an explosive device and you let it go and a fuze burns into it. And I mean, it's devastating. I never tried that one, but I I've seen a lot of people when I go to Lakewood do it. So, hey, I hope you can do it. I know it's difficult. I mean, it is you know, they're like rats. As soon as the lights come on, they gone. And soon as you go away, they're back. And this goes on the whole night. I mean, these are not fireworks. Like I said, they're destructive devices. So hopefully you can do something because through the last two years, it's gotten out of control. I guess we all had to buy earplugs. Is there any other public comment on item 11? I will take you back behind the rail. Councilwoman Mongo. Perhaps this is a question for our CIO. You know, we have to go Long Beach up. Would it be possible for neighbors to document where the fireworks are coming from in the weeks leading up to 4th of July, utilizing the go along, each of which has the geocoding? Right now, you can code if someone leaves animal defecation or dumping. Could we get a new drop down, which is called illegal fireworks, so that we'd be able to at least start documenting which houses these fireworks are coming from to prepare the police for 4th of July. Brian Sestak is. Councilmember Mongo. Yes, that's something we can look into performing probably very similar to that coyote sighting application of how we took that along and added that as well. So we could we could look into that. I think that would be really helpful. I think that at least in my neighborhood, it's the same houses every year. And if on my evening walk I could just tag the house and let PD know who it is and what they're doing. I think a lot of neighbors could get involved in that, especially if we, as the council, put that on our Twitters and our Facebook and show it in our newsletters that neighbors can do this. I think it'll give PD a head start on on the issue and hopefully people will be more cognizant. Mr. Stokers, hold on 1/2. I do have a follow up question, but I wanted to ask our Deputy Chief, Rich Rocky. If that were to be the case, would that qualify as some form of evidence for a citizen complaint? They go? Long Beach. Complaint. Maybe that's a city attorney question. It would be with photo geo coded. It would certainly be evidence that could be included in the report, whether would be sufficient evidence to either issue a citation or to be prosecuted. Would it be fact specific? But would you be able to, if we're able to add that category, be able to look into that? Because I think what we're hearing is this is a numbers game, right? Folks who want to engage in this activity will always outnumber police officers. It's just the way it is. And so what we don't want is to leave residents with this feeling that they're there's much of it that cannot be helped. So here we're making a very concerted effort to do what we can. But given the nature of how information is captured and transmitted today, I'm hoping that there is some advancement that we can utilize or tap into. So perhaps the citizens complaint could at least be recorded. We could certainly talk to the city prosecutor in the police department about that. Yes. Okay. I would appreciate that. And Mr. Sisto, because I wanted to ask you, considering Miss Mango brought Councilwoman Mango brought up the Go Along Beach app. Is there a mechanism that you have in place or perhaps city manager? Is there a mechanism you have in place to receive requests from council members to add categories to our GO application? And is that something that the office is openly accepting? Yes. Yes. What? We're open to looking at any new categories that you wish to have on there with the understanding that it's within the direction from the council. Sure. So an individual council member may have requests such as coyotes are not necessarily endemic throughout the city of Long Beach, and it might be just be specific to a couple of council districts. So I hope that we're not looking to council agreement for small minutia and for this I look to the city manager's office. Yeah. So, Vice Mayor, I can add a little bit here. We get requests all the time from either councilmembers or members of the public or departments for adding to our go Long Beach. And we look at each and every one of those and see, does it make sense to go on the platform? Can candidates connect to one of our existing systems, which is important too? Is that the goal? Long Beach needs to be able to feed into something we already do. So we look at each one of those and then make decisions. Can it be on the platform or can it not? Great. I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you both. Councilman Austin. Thank you. And I want to thank everybody for their thoughtful questions. I have a couple regarding as a follow up to you. Deputy Chief Rocky, you outline the number of citations given out over the last three years. What is that compared to in terms of the calls for service or complaints that you actually receive? Do you have numbers? That can kind of give us a picture? Councilmember Eisen Yes, I do have and. This is just for the 4th of July itself, not during the entire week. If just for the day of the fourth. Four calls for service. Yes. So for July 4th of 2014, we received 550 pyro or heard pyro calls, which means firework type calls. Some of those may have been witnessed by the calling party, and many of them are heard only. So that, of course, if we if it's heard only, we had sent a police officer into the area to see if we can locate it. Many times we do not. Or we may see the evidence of fireworks that have been lit and the person has abandoned the area. In 2015, we received 635 calls for service under those same call class. And that is just for one day. It doesn't spend the entire week, correct? That is just for the day. 4th of July, the 24 hour period. So based on that, you guys are responding or actually writing citations for it would be based on that. But less than 10% of the actual calls that you receive, correct? Yes, sir. It's very small amount and some of those we may not respond to. It may be just what we call a district carjack, depending on the information from the calling party and if we can locate the area of where these are being lit up. So on the 4th of July itself, and I know we think I know the answer to this question, but I'm asking for the benefit of the public as well. What does our staffing model look like compared to any other day, a regular day? Our staffing model in the 4th of July is all police department officers work that day. The only officers that do not work are officers that are on a regularly scheduled day off on a scheduled vacation. All others are to work. There is no holidays, there's no overtime days, and there's no training allowed during that day. And the the role of the officers who are staff there, then all of them aren't responding to calls, obviously. Correct. They're not all responding to firework calls they're doing. We have different models out that day. We do have our regular calls for service units out in the field that are max deployment that year and or that day in each division. We also have a comprehensive action operation plan that we do for the city, especially along the coast, where we have the largest influx of people visiting our city and our community members attending to see firework shows and be at the beach and enjoy what the city has to offer. So in those areas where we have that large influx, we have officers specifically assigned to to those areas to provide public safety and enforce our laws. Okay. So I think I think I want to hit on some of the points that there were already made. And I've brought this up before because I'm challenged and I know our police department is challenged to enforce this this this ordinance that we actually have that all fireworks are illegal. Particularly when every border and city in Long Beach or around the city of Long Beach actually legalizes suppressing fireworks. Right. And so we have I've heard plenty this evening about illegal fireworks, Long Beach. All fireworks are legal in Long Beach, whether they go boom, whether they go up in the air or whether they are just ground flowers that are that are relatively harmless. I personally think we need to revisit our policy on on fireworks period, because I think. That if we go within a blanket illegal approach, we will probably open ourselves up to a market where the more egregious fireworks are going to be more accessible and more proliferated throughout our city. And so thank you, Councilmember Richardson, for bringing this forward. I think this has been a very thoughtful conversation. Council member. I think it's important to point out, in addition to our enforcement of fireworks, our mission is to deter and enforce laws related to public consumption of alcohol, public intoxication, driving under the influence, unruly parties, dangerous and illegal barbecues, use of illegal fireworks, which we've been talking about traffic and enforcement violations and complaints, managing pedestrian vehicular traffic flows, handling a high volume of calls for service in addition to managing our large crowds. So I wanted to point that out because fireworks is very important, but there are so many things that we are faced with during the 4th of July, and these were just to name a few. Councilmember or not. Thank you. And this we cover this topic. At a public safety committee meeting many months ago. And I believe with that meeting, I brought up the point that my constituents were complaining as far as 30 days ahead of time. So let's let's not get started too late. Let's do it the earlier the better. So if we could target June 4th, that'd be great. Also, there are particular areas of my district, too, Deputy Chief Rocky, that would be beat 11 that has a lot of calls for illegal fireworks. And so if we could target certain areas, we'd be we'd just like to assist you in that, to get it out in our weekly newsletter or whatever it means we can. So thank you. Thank you. And seeing no further comment. Members, please cast your vote. Councilwoman Mongo. Councilwoman Price. Motion carries. Thank you. Item 12 Communication from Council Member Dunga Recommendation to direct the City Manager to identify potential funding sources for the acquisition of vacant property between Baker Street and Wardlow Road District seven.