Recommendation to request the following recommendations of the Illegal Explosives and Fireworks Action Plan to address the illegal use of fireworks and explosives in Long Beach: 1) Request City Attorney to draft an ordinance that would include a person who owns, rents, leases or otherwise has possession of a premises as a responsible party for the illegal use, discharge, possession, storage or sale of fireworks on the premises; 2) Request City Attorney and City Manager to report back to the City Council with options for increasing the penalties for anyone cited or arrested for fireworks violations; 3) Request City Attorney and City Manager to report back to the City Council on the feasibility of including an administrative citation process for illegal fireworks use, to allow for additional enforcement capability in Long Beach; 4) Request City Manager to assess the feasibility of establishing an online portal or GoLongBeach app feature for residents to submit video evidence of fireworks violations for referral to the City Prosecutor; 5) Request City Man
Thank you. Item 25, which is also fireworks related. Communication from Councilman Austin, Councilwoman Zendejas, Vice Mayor Andrews, Councilmember Richardson. Recommendation to request recommendations of the illegal explosives and Fireworks Action Plan to address the illegal use of fireworks and explosives in Long Beach. Councilman Austin. Sir. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I'd just like to just just frame the issue. While the illegal use of fireworks is a recurrent issue, each year, this year it's been mentioned, seems to be significantly amplified and based on media reports that the surge in illegal fireworks and explosions complaints is being experienced not only here in Long Beach , but in cities across the country. The activity seemed to have started much earlier this year with greater frequency and a greater number of loud explosive devices nightly. And like many of my colleagues on the council, I not only experience these nightly disruptions in my neighborhood. I've spoken with many residents and heard from many residents in my district and throughout the city that they are. Asking the city to do more to address the problem. I'd like to thank my colleagues, council members and they House Vice Mayor Andrews and Councilmember Richardson for signing on to this item really at the last minute. This was a supplemental item as well as Councilmember Price and the council members who brought this item, previous item to the agenda on fireworks. It deserves our attention as a council. This is an issue that impacts many of us, all of us, especially those who are veterans or others who suffer from PTSD. Families with small children, pets, pet owners. I've heard from many of you, but it affects us all. And there's no easy answers here. A week ago, I held a virtual town hall on the issue of. Legal fireworks with our city prosecutor Doug Halbert, North Division Police Commander Anthony Lopez. We had a very productive discussion and I received many constructive suggestions, suggestions from the community, and I've taken a look at some of them as well as best practices in other cities. With that information, we put together this a legal explosives fireworks action plan to support our education campaign and current enforcement efforts with additional tools to curtail the activity. Is that versus the virtual town hall and bringing this item forward. Our city prosecutor has already, as mentioned, established a public portal for residents to report and submit evidence of illegal firework activities directly to the city prosecutor's office and website of the city prosecutor. However, dot com backslash fireworks that are illegal is also started sending letters to property owners where illegal. And I want to clarify that property owners, residents, anybody who is a dweller in a household can be cited. And he's going to send these to these individuals where these these households, where where illegal fireworks are being charged and given notice the storage or discharge of fireworks. That property is against the law and constitutes a public notice. I would like to thank the city prosecutor, however, for taking these immediate steps. While we won't be able to eliminate the problem of illegal fireworks altogether and immediately with additional education and concrete actions, I believe we can take steps forward here to really make a difference for our city. So we put forth seven our request on this item, and I'm certainly open to hear from my colleagues about potential amendments to this. But number one, we request the city attorney to draft an ordinance that would include a person who owns rents, leases or otherwise, has possession of the premises as the responsible party for the illegal use, discharged possession, storage or sale of fireworks on the premises. Number two, we request the city attorney and city manager to report back to the city council with options for increasing the penalties for anyone cited or arrested for firework violations. Number three, we request the city attorney and city manager to report back to the City Council on the feasibility of including an administrative citation process for legal firework use to allow additional enforcement capacity in our city. Number four. Request the city manager to assess the feasibility of establishing an online portal or go Long Beach app feature for residents to submit video evidence of firework violations for referral to city prosecutor. Five request the city manager assess the feasibility of utilizing open data or crowdsourcing to create a publicly accessible heat map of incidents of illegal fireworks and explosives in Long Beach. Number six Request of City Manager Assess the feasibility of establishing a fireworks hotline for residents to report illegal fireworks and explosives. And lastly, number seven, request the city manager provide an update on public education efforts this year that all fireworks are illegal in Long Beach. I think some of this is done and is also in line with what we are already doing. But we want to send a strong message to anyone out there that that fireworks are illegal. I would appreciate my colleagues and support on this item. I know it's very important to all of our constituents. Thank you very much. My next councilwoman. Jeanine, you're up next. Somebody else can. Somebody that's on the item can second it. That's fine. I can go at the end. But I wasn't there. Right. Fine. Okay. Fine. This is I like to say, you know, in this one person I wouldn't appreciate out, you know, for bringing in the other, you know, our colleagues that got on with this excellent idea. And there's no doubt that in the last 75 years I've been here, this is the worst year for fireworks. You know, I like some questions before we get started here. You know, do we have a, you know, a report on the most commonly reported locations for fireworks? But. I'm sorry. Can you repeat the question, please? We have a report. What's the most common, you know, reported locations for fireworks. So we can ask our police department and our director of Disaster Preparedness Communications, Reggie Harrison, to give some anecdotal response to that. I think the item is asking us to kind of come back with a heat map where we would provide some data, but we can provide some just anecdotal evidence. I do believe we're seeing them throughout the city right now, but I'll turn it to them to ask or to give additional detail. The Vice Mayor being joined by chief of police Robert Luna. As the city manager mentioned, we are and as a report indicated, we have seen highs in calls for service regarding fireworks already exceeding what we received during the same time period last year. My most recent report indicates that we're up by 25% over the same period of time last year in terms of the number of calls for services that we're receiving. And they are they're being called from all over the city. We haven't found a concentrated area that I'm aware of at this point. It seems like they're pretty well distributed throughout many neighborhoods in Long Beach and also not just in Long Beach, but nationwide as well. We're seeing lots of reports as indicating that this issue is record setting across the country. So it's not just an isolated alarm beach issue. Uh, if I could add to that. Robert Luna here. Good evening, Vice Mayor and members of the City Council. We've heard our community loud and clear. I've spoken to many of you in the last week, two weeks. And I know that our community is very frustrated with this significant nuisance from the police department perspective. We are in the process of putting maps together, and they're for the purposes of giving them to our officers. So they're armed with that in the field and they can go out and identify specific addresses or locations where it's a continuous challenge for us. I saw one today where we had three addresses, specifically in one of the police divisions. And the officers are directed to go out there and spend more time. The last couple of weeks have been a little difficult. We've been preoccupied with we're now at 60 protest. So as those hopefully will slow down a bit, we can go out there. But for anyone in the public who's listening to me, please, it is a reminder that fireworks are illegal in this city. We want you to be respectful to your neighbors. I live here in the city and it's very difficult to sleep at night, as many people have described it. And I've got to tell you specifically in this environment, it's very difficult for our officers to go out and want to give citations for this violation. It is $1,000. We don't want to give citations, although we've given out several dozen of them already, and we don't want to give out any more. So we want you to stop doing this. But that being said, we are going to be putting out additional officers primarily focused on this activity. And if you're caught, you're going to get cited. And it's really expensive. So please stop. Thank you. I really am that cheap because I'm really looking forward to report coming back with locations and numbers of citations. You know better to use in don't know drama for you know the enforcement so but but what I really would like to thank you know residents can again who's keeping me on my toes every single boom she she may not know it but B she'd be in a lab right up she's right up the street from each other. And I am convinced that together we are going to find out who is keeping instead in all these so we can get these things taken care at night. So with that, I want to thank everyone. And so the next that will be missed is the data. You coming up, please. Thank you, Vice Mayor. ANDREWS First of all, I wanted to thank our staff for for giving this item the much needed attention that it's been a need for these past couple of weeks. I know that with COVID 19 present here, we haven't been able to give as much attention to this to this issue as we as we would have liked to. But, yes, I am I am a resident of the downtown area here in Long Beach, and I am am witness to every night having to hear the you know, the these fireworks are illegal and they're illegal for a reason. So I appreciate all my residents for trying to try to chime in and letting us know where the problem is and stuff. So they're all over our district. So I really appreciate Councilmember Austin for taking the lead on this on this problem that, you know, that we're all facing right now. It's very important that we you know. That we realize that this really affects those most vulnerable, which are our seniors, our children, and especially our pets. And it's very, very heartbreaking to feel like your your your hands are tied, because by the time that, you know, the officers come out to where the site was, there's nobody there anymore. So it's very hard to track and actually hard to enforce it, even though it is a misdemeanor here in Long Beach. So with that said, I'm so excited about the new portal that our prosecutor has launched today that will enable us to actually submit the videos, the the locations of where we're hearing them and pictures. But I just want to tell all our residents, not only in the first District but everywhere to yes, please do report those and any instances onto this portal, but always remember that your safety comes first. That's one of the things that I think is the most scary from these illegal fireworks, is that, you know, the innocent people that are not setting them off are are the ones that are being hurt by it. I've known people getting burnt in their back by them, you know, with them not even being close to someone, setting them off. So we and I, it's just so scary to see that and to put, you know, innocent people in harm's way . So, again, if if if you're out there, you're listening. Please don't don't do these fireworks. Please don't just think of those other people that you might hurt and you know, it's just not right. So thank you very much again, council member Austin for for bringing this item forward. Yes, Councilwoman Mungo. Councilwoman Mungo, are you there? Yes. Thank you, Vice Mayor. A couple of quick questions. We talked a little bit about the fee of $1,000 fine, but the individuals that we're talking about are literally buying thousands of dollars in fireworks. Lighting them on. Right. So there is a fine is very meaningful too. So my question would be to city staff, what can we do to force add to the. Along the lines of 40 hours of community service, you're keeping people up and ruining their sleep. Let's find something that's more important to you than money. If you're obviously willing to let your money on fire, what else can we do? So yes. So it's currently a misdemeanor. We've looked into this and whether or not we can raise the fee, I believe that would require some state law changes in terms of other sentences. That tends to be up to the city prosecutor on what he can sentence under. Perhaps a chief when I can expound on that. Currently, as Mr. Modica stated, Councilwoman Mango, it is a misdemeanor and the punishment or the fine can go up to $1,000. So you basically get a misdemeanor citation for $1,000. If the judge, when you go to court, if he keeps it at that, he or she keeps it at that amount. Is there an administrative fine that we could impose instead of 40 hours of community service? Because, again, fireworks are expensive. And if you're willing to light tons of fireworks on fire, you're literally lighting your money on fire. So to me, that saying $1,000, no, no big deal. So what other alternatives as a city could we pass legislation, either local legislation that says, okay, well, in Long Beach, it's an administrative fine and we're going to do 40 hours of community service. Or 60. I'm open to a lot of suggestions. Yeah, I hear your frustration and that's a level of frustration. A lot of us and I see us as a community. I will absolutely sit down with the city attorney and the city prosecutor to see what further options we may have. And then can you tell me about the Coordination Council member Richardson and I, when we're on Facebook and talking with community members, talk a lot about, um, we work with our own commanders, but we have some challenges on our borders from cities who are contract cities and may not be contracting for as much service or are patrolled by another agency. And specifically, I've worked 4th of July as a sheriff's deputy in the city of Carson, and I'm aware of what they're going through. But, um, for a city to get serious, no matter what city it is, they need to have adequate staffing. Because if they don't, all of the Long Beach residents who are in border cities are really just. Garage with the fireworks that are just adjacent to them because the sounds are so loud and the sound carries so clearly. What are we doing to cooperate with our partners at Signal Hill, Los Alamitos, SEAL Beach and the L.A. County Sheriff's Department, which covers Lakewood, Lakewood, Hawaiian Gardens, Bellflower and Paramount. One of the advantages we have here in the city, our own city, is that we have our own police department. So when a community speaks, all of you speak to me and speak to me very loud and clear. So we're able to put resources on this challenge. I'm just going to be brief and say that other cities around us, specifically county agencies, don't show the same level of interest that we do. Okay. You know, there was not. You have. And you've mentioned that the increases in calls is up 25%. Do you think that that is a total number of reported? Which would be great. Or is it location? Because one of the things I was invited to a Facebook group called Against the Fireworks. And I had originally thought it was going. Uh, Councilwoman Mango. The the dispatches or the calls for service are up. I know we could probably turn it into something like that. Can't remember. We lost two there for about 20 seconds, can you? Or are we getting more locations from your gut? So, Councilmember, we lost you for about 20 seconds. Can you repeat the question again, please? Councilmember Can you hear us? Councilmember Mongo. Fine. I think we lost it. We're going to go and come here. But you said the council vice mayor. Vice mayor. Okay. Go ahead. Mr. Harrison, were you able to tell me if it was 25% increase in locations or calls? Because what we need is a large number of residents participating in the crowd sourcing to identify and narrow down the locations to send in our officers. Councilwoman Mungo Robert Luna here again. The numbers that were given out, calls for service, an increase in calls for service that we are receiving both into dispatch and then obviously that our police officers are handling. In regards if I you did cut out there for a second, I think you asked if there were reports taken on something like this and know there are calls for service that we go back to and then our systems can draw from that calls for service for things like heat maps and addresses that our officers are paying more attention to, to try and stop the use of the illegal fireworks. I'm hoping that answers your question, but you did cut out there for a second, so I want to make sure I did answer your question. Thank you, Chief. I was working towards figuring out if we were to set aside a task force in every region of the city to crowdsource where the explosions are coming from, then maybe the police officers could be more successful. I know there's nothing more frustrating than to show up to a location based on a call report, but to find out that that's not the location. Fireworks they echo the sound can't always be identified depending on what region of the city or district of the city you're coming from. So I was just trying to figure out if we could work some kind of crowdsourcing. With our neighbors. And then lastly. There was a discussion two years ago about evidence and how a person needs to do a private person's arrest to enforce that. They saw the lighting of the firework versus a police officer seeing the lighting of the firework. Have we made any progress as a city or any with our legislation to allow the prosecution of. People lighting off fireworks that are caught on film. Let me try and answer that the best I can. Currently, it's a misdemeanor, and if the officer observes it, they can cite for the violation if they didn't see it. But one of our community members sees it. They can do a private citizen's arrest. And Councilmember, this is Tom. The program that the city prosecutor is launching is exactly that. So he is launching a website where residents can upload their videos and upload their pictures. They can put in suspect suspect descriptions, they can give actual locations and they can say, here is the criminal activity that I witnessed. And then the prosecutor will send letters to the property owner whose property it is, because that is against the law, not to create a nuisance on your property. And then that can be followed up on that will requires, you know, some identifying information. So the more information the community has to provide the prosecutor, the better on specific individuals that are performing specific criminal acts. So it is another tool that we're glad to have added to the arsenal. I appreciate that. Councilmember Odinga and I were talking earlier. I know in my district we have some individuals who are not necessarily associated with the House. So, for instance, a group of neighbors see the individual. Adjacent to the park, lighting off fireworks. But they've never seen him in the neighborhood before, so they're not sure which household he belongs to. What about the videoing of a particular person not associated with a residence? The backpack lighters, I guess, is what we're kind of calling them. Yeah. And those pictures or videos can be turned over through the city prosecutor to the police department, and we can investigate it to see if we can make a connection and be able to identify them. So that is absolutely a possibility. And, Mr. Halbert, it will be it'll be available for sharing with our adjacent cities and the district attorney's office. I will have to ask that question. I think he's using it for our specific, you know, what's in his jurisdiction to be able to send the letters to for those go to private property owners. So, you know, that is one of the things that council has to look at. Last time was holding the private property owner more responsible. We had investigated the admin site process, which can do that, but it also requires a lot of work and some additional costs. The prosecution prosecutor can do that under existing laws, and we'd be happy to talk to our neighboring cities if they'd like more information on that. Wonderful. Thank you. We have to get a better handle on this. I mean, every night everyone knows I have three dogs and a veteran and a 20 month old, 19 month old at home. And as I lay in bed, when she wakes up in the middle of the night with the mortars going off and for years the dogs have been terrorized. But nothing like this year. This year, and I've talked to some of our officers, they are working their hardest. It is just very, very difficult to get a handle on all of this with the resources. So we have to come up with better solutions. So thank you for all that you're doing and thank you for continuing to listen to the community. And a big thank you to Councilmember Austin for your listening session last week. I know a lot of our neighbors really appreciate that and the committee that Councilman Price put forward, because those are all avenues where we can brainstorm and come up with solutions. A lot of people say, well, what are other cities doing? And I haven't been able to find a city that does any of it better than us yet. But I'm still listening and willing to adopt any other creative ideas that come from any other cities. Thank you. Thank you. That, of course, when asked would you said. That Vice Mayor wanted to take a minute and chime in on this? I think the city council has every year taken this on. And, you know, I think Councilman Austin for for putting this platform for us to all sort of jump in and share our thoughts and ideas here every year it's been it's been bad. And every year it seems like it's gotten worse. Every year we have an agenda item or two about it. This year, it's clearly worse than ever or people are also paying attention to this moment. So I think it causes us to discuss the complexity of the problem and let people understand just how big this issue is. It's a problem across the L.A. region. There's 88 cities here in L.A. County, all with different rules. We're all piled up right next to each other. You're North Long Beach, reported by Paramount, Bellflower and Lakewood all have different degrees of of the problem and different laws around the problem. And when long because but we're all right next to each other. And so you can you can walk right across our border by safe and sane, so you can buy illegal fireworks online. So people are frustrated. Residents are frustrated, but they are organizing. And I applaud their organizing. Hamilton Association My district's been very, very vocal. Every every neighborhood North Long Beach deals with this every single night. I say this lot to them when they visit. A part of it is I just try to help them understand that, hey, I rest my head north Long Beach every night right there with you. I raised the last five, last five years, two newborns that have been disturbed all night. We have to do a lot to keep my dog from, like, tearing up, tearing at the house. And so so we get it. We're frustrated about it. I think the legal fireworks Facebook group has done some good organizing. I know that. I'm concerned with what I've heard about some of the non productive responses to this. More specifically, what I'm hearing about vigilante patrol groups, I want to just say that it's important that our residents have confidence that that we are being proactive on this issue. And we are letting folks know that, you know, this is not a moment for any sort of vigilante justice. So I wanted to strongly discourage what I've been seeing out there, the talks about vigilantism. I also want to want to say that, you know, I think that we can spend a lot of time talking about solutions and what we're going to do. But I think we need to do more to check in on the welfare of our most vulnerable residents. So so for example, I spoke with the VA U.S. vets just here recently about just just today and over the last few days about creating a space for veterans with PTSD in different areas of town, veterans who are going to have a difficult time allow them to come to a safe space where there's counseling, maybe music, if it stays open til 12 or 1:00, maybe there's maybe there's you know, there's pizza, there's music, there's counseling. Allow them to be in a safe space so they can receive some therapy and be in a really safe space around them. I would like to personally just offer Highland Park for this. And I want to also in Councilman, I would include this in the motion. I want to offer my one time District nine funds to help if this going out in park and I hope that others can. I know the V.A. has some of this already, but in North Beach, we don't have anything like this. So I want to I want to add up to $5,000 for my one time to help get a program like this going to help folks just have a safe space. And I want to just pause there. Tom, would you mind responding to that request? Sure. So thank you, Councilmember. So we'd be happy to take a look at that, especially if that's a service that an existing group already provides and if we're able to host it here in Long Beach. We would this year need to be checking it with the health order to make sure that it fits under that. Typically, gatherings are not prohibited or prohibited are not allowed. But counseling services, there are some exemptions for some specific treatment and counseling services. So if you want to add that to the motion, we'd be happy to look at what can be done either this year or in the future. Absolutely. And what and what I understand, it's it's it's exactly what you described, what we what we discussed. It's really about counseling and therapy. And, you know, we want to utilize that exemption to the to the order to handle that. We have a venue, social hall out in part. We have funding. So that's what I want to I want to see happen. And we're talking about maybe the week leading up to the 4th of July and maybe the week after, because we know it's going to get worse. And then it doesn't just stop it, you know, it begins to smooth out. So that's the week I'm really concerned. Those two weeks are what I'm really concerned about. So the other thing that I want to mention is that I know that we have a lot of focus on suppression, and I know that that's important. But I really want to have some questions about upstream. How are these things coming into our community? Chief, are you able to speak to, number one, how we know that the very, very loud devices, the very loud explosive devices that are coming to. You have an idea on the scale on how they're coming in and our capacity to limit that ability for them to come in. Yes, sir, Councilman. When we've made arrest in the past and we've made several arrests in the past, generally people are selling them. They're selling them on the Internet, and they're getting them from either the state of Arizona or the state of Nevada, and they're bringing them in in quantities. So that is extremely difficult to enforce. But that does it. That never stops us from from doing what we do. And so we're talking a lot about giving citations or seeing violations out in the street, which is important. But we're also going to be on a very aggressive campaign to try and stop a lot of this activity on the Internet. And I'll leave it at that. Right? Right. So so that said, I know that, you know, we can we can do these things, but really, it's it's difficult without having a clear front door on where these things are coming in the community. And given our past work in L.A. County of different regulatory framework, really the statewide solution. So I want to also add to this this motion a recommendation for the city to advocate for a statewide ban. I think a statewide ban would supersede so the county would be able to do with this rogue charter city. So the state would have to do this in order for us to have one consistent law across the region to allow us to enforce them in a more strategic way. And so I want to include that as well. I'll accept that as a friendly. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. I was going to keep going. I got I got maybe one more. And I also mentioned my support for the data and the heat map. You know, I said that publicly. We've talked about this. It's included in the item. I think it's about really being transparent regarding how massive this issue is. We also need to be transparent. Transparent in the way our city prioritized, prioritizes responses. What I hear from folks, again, is that they don't necessarily feel heard that the city is responding. So, so so my my my thought here is that. When we rollout, when we identify whatever data we have, we also should be able to look at some response data and how we prioritize it and maybe think about and think about maybe some strategies on response that sort of could be targeted and there may be some innovative ways to do it. But I really want to see the data of the calls and the relationship to the response. I'm supportive of the ideas that that that the prosecutor to hold property owners accountable. These are discussions we've talked about with with respect to if a liquor store has certain activities that happen there, motels have certain activities happening in there. The property owner also is accountable to the impact they have on the broader neighborhood. And if we know that there are certain properties that are, you know, a problem, then, you know, I think that's something we we certainly need to look at. I think that makes sense. On Monday, I'm going to the city prosecutor joining joining me on a District nine town hall. I think that would be a good time to say it. 530 on Monday, a virtual town hall. That information is coming out in email, but the city prosecutor is going to join us to talk about this concept as well. So a lot of these meetings are happening across the city. So I want the ninth district to know that theirs is coming up on Monday. I think that's all I have. And just to sort of account, thank you for accepting the friendly councilman. I want to just be clear cause I didn't hear a second I cued up, so I want to be on the record second in this as well. And and, Councilman, you accept that that part I want to add some of my one times to help get this pilot program on as well. You guys you guys get that as well, councilman. The one times. I mean, that's something that I think you can do independent of this this item and set that up in your district. I mean, no, I don't know that that has to be a part of a citywide thing. I mean, you want to do it at Highland Park. You want to use your district nine one times. You know, I'm not sure because I don't want anything to prohibit this moving forward. Is that is that that's a wrinkle? I think that might be a bit of a challenge. Um, so, so. So councilmember if I can jump in there, we don't need the one times in there. It's good to get enough to hear that the councilmember wants to do that. I would like some direction from the entire council that we should be focusing on creating a new program in the next couple, in the next week essentially, and working with the VA so that we would requests to be part of the motion to get council direction. And the one times we can follow up the actual dollar amount, we'll follow up separately. Okay. I guess I can accept that idea. Okay. But how do you guys want to do it. Is is good. I just think we need to be ready. And it's the 4th of July help support our readiness. Yes. I agree. And several residents have actually brought that idea forward as well. And so I appreciate you including it. Thank you. Thank you very much. Congressman, just an got a one year. Thank you very that. So I, I support the direction that this is going. I, I it's not lost on me, though, that we are in a moment when we are talking about what kind of responses our community wants to see. And it's not lost on me that we have kind of two different groups that are asking us for changes. One of them is asking for more police presence and one of them is asking us for less. So I really love getting the prosecutor involved and talking about a statewide strategy, talking about where we can kind of stop the inflow of this. And some of my constituents have shared with me photos of, you know, our grocery stores or Ralphs or Vons and our targets that are selling some of the smaller fireworks that are selling them nonetheless. And so, Tom, could you share with everyone what they should be doing if they see that at a store right now? So if the question is if illegal fireworks are being sold at stores, they are not allowed to be sold at stores in Long Beach. So Lakewood does allow what are called safe and sane, but you may not sell those pretty municipal code in Long Beach, and that's a crime that should be reported. Right. And they can still report that through the new website that that Doug Halbert is doing. Correct. I think we'd prefer those to be reported in to you dispatch order. You can get them to their council office and we'll follow up from both a code enforcement business license perspective and also a criminal perspective with PD. Okay, so we mentioned dispatch. One of the other concerns that's been brought up to me by several constituents is when they call dispatch, because this is a lower level crime and they don't feel like they're getting the best response. So I just want to make sure that I say publicly for all my constituents that have reached out so that the chief or whoever's in charge of dispatch can make sure that there's proper training happening on how to respond to those calls. I know it must be frustrating because the whole city is blowing up at the same time, so I can't imagine being a dispatcher at that time. That must be irritating. We appreciate we appreciate that, councilmember. And you're exactly right. Dispatchers are extremely busy with fireworks calls. I've indicated earlier that we've already seen a dramatic increase in the number of calls over last year, but they are responsible for entering those calls for service as they receive them. Often we get multiple calls for the same incident. So they do try to do some screening of those so that we limit the number of duplicates that might be in the system. But it is it's it's an extremely busy time for the dispatchers as it is for law enforcement officers out in the field trying to respond to those as well. We look forward to working with the prosecutor's office, with the new portal that he is introducing, as well as the police department is establishing email addresses as well, where we will be referring those callers who indicate that they have video or pictures to to share. We will be utilizing that technology and when referring callers to that. Thank you for that. And I think that the. The collaborative effort is important because as already noted through the rest of the conversation, what's happening in neighborhoods is somebody calls the police because somebody is doing fireworks. Maybe they get there in time and then the police go and talk to the people. The police don't see them, so they can't cite them. The neighbor maybe sees them. But my neighbors don't want to file against somebody that's not doing fireworks because they don't want somebody to know where they live. And so there's a real fear that many people have about doing an arrest that way. And that, for me, is why I think working with the prosecutor, working at the state level is so important. And I hope that maybe you guys can continue to have creative ideas about how community members can share information, but that doesn't put them at risk. And. Does not mean that we have officers coming out to basically just shoot off some people when there's not a citation happening or there could be a situation of an increased anxiety there. And then the last question I had on enforcement with this is. Do we know what the surrounding finds are around the city outside of Long Beach? I've heard some subsidies are 2000 or 3000. And it's just curious. We have that data. This is Tom. To my knowledge, it's it's regulated by the state, so it's a misdemeanor with a maximum of $1,000. So if there is anyone that has seen a city with something higher, we'd be very interested in that. Our research to date shows that this is not a city spying that set the maximum set by state law. Great. And I know that was mentioned earlier. I just wanted to make sure we tease that out one more time. And then for enforcement, I mean, it seems like fire is a responsible party because they if there is a fire caused by these guys. I'm just wondering if there's any other role for any other departments to play. So I would ask that question of the team as you guys are working on this. And the last thing I'll say is, if there's a way for the for the alert Long Beach, for there to be a notice, to go out through that alert about how to file complaints on fireworks, I think that would be really helpful to make sure that the city is is playing a key role in educating people on the right steps to take. I know that in the past we've done things like sending postcards or putting something in people's bills, and I know that's really expensive, but I would hope that after the program is finalized that we can send that information out. Thank you. And the alert Long Beach is scheduled by the by the public affairs team, and that's scheduled for Friday to go out to announce the new program and how you can help us track through data where fireworks are happening and to get specific complaints about properties to the city prosecutor. Can I ask one more question? What we're talking about this on. There was some chat a while back whenever we started the COVID crisis and trying to get information about the DMV playing a role in connecting people who have driver's licenses in the city of Long Beach to the city of Long Beach's alert Long Beach, is that something that's happened or could potentially happen to make sure that we're getting contact with more people? I don't think we've quite heard that in terms of the DMV's role. We get it through a firm and we basically have everybody's land line in our database, and then we ask people to opt in through cell phones. So if there's another way to get additional numbers that we can expand our reach, we'd be interested in looking at that. Okay. I think that's all. Thank you. Thank you. This is the government. And they have. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I just was queuing up because I had thought that I had thickened on that motion a bit earlier, but not sure if that was captured. And nice of you to come to Austin. Thank you. I think we've. We really had a great conversation and I really appreciate the feedback from all of my colleagues and it's a very important item. Again, you know, I will acknowledge that this is a unique time and an odd issue to be in talking about enforcement. But, you know, we do live in a society made up of laws. And this is about being a good neighbor. This is about, you know, respecting your know, your neighbor and the community as a whole and understanding that these aren't these aren't safe. The same fireworks that we're talking about necessarily, although all fireworks are illegal, these are explosives. These are very disruptive to the quality of life, but also to the mental health of many of our our neighbors and residents. And so let's keep that in mind as we move forward. Appreciate the conversation. And I look forward to hopefully some productive results out of this. Thank you. Because when I stood up to come in. Thank you. There's public comment for this item. I believe there are eight callers on the line. First up is Seagram's. Your time starts now. Seagrams, are you there? Hello. Next speaker is. And Sheryl. Your time starts now. Thank you. My name is. I live my name. I'm Cheryl. I live in District two. First off, I just want to start by saying, as was just said a little bit ago, we are not talking about safe and sane folks here. We're talking about dangerous explosives that are legal statewide. Some of them, the eighties and up are illegal on a federal level. So we're not talking about little baby fireworks. We're talking about things are dangerous. They set fires. They're dangerous to be near. I've had my back patio scoured by firewood from my neighbor two doors over the days and education are nice and all that, but a lot of these people are shooting these off. No, they're shooting off illegal fireworks. They know they're breaking the law and they don't care because they know they won't be caught, because they know that even when when police come out to their doors, unless they've seen it happening, nothing will happen to them. They just deny that they've done it and continue to do it as soon as the police leave. My neighbors do that. My neighbor did it just the other night when I called the cops on them. They let them off as soon as the cops left. In fact, those same neighbors I confronted a few weeks ago about firing off fireworks and mentioned that it terrifies my dog. Not only did they basically just tell me to go f off, but they told me that they hope my dogs died and became very intimidating to me. I'm a spy to middle aged woman, and even though I have a very fiery personality, having to confront people, putting off fireworks is dangerous for me. These people don't care that it's illegal, which means that they don't care if I'm asking them to stop because my dogs are scared or because kids. Are scared or. That they're scared, they basically just slip their fingers off of this and continue to do it. And if we try to say anything more to them, they become belligerent and confrontational and intimidating and threatening to us. One of the things that I have a problem with is that I've we've actually in my neighborhood in Rose Park had police that we've called out who are down the street from fireworks going off that we had given them addresses for. And they aren't doing anything. They just are. You're chatting with somebody they just took a report from when there's fireworks literally a half a block away that both me and a friend of mine at separate time pointed out to an officer. And he was like, Yeah, yeah, I'm going to be there in a minute. By the time he got there, there was a huge fight breaking out among people. So the fireworks are now forgotten. When we called in the same addresses over and over again, and I personally called in one address literally every single night for three weeks. It took that much of me calling and other people calling on the same address over and over and over again for the police to actually finally do what they should have been doing, which is waiting down the block. A friend of mine witnessed it happen, waiting down the block until these people saw the fireworks again and bussing them for it. Finally, thank God, because that particular address has been keeping me up night after night after night. We need to. Thank you for your comment. Next up, we have Sheryl Simmons. Your time starts now. Thank you. Thank you. Mayor Garcia and city council members who have heard our pleas and have shown. Up. Positive action in the last week with regards to the illegal explosive problems happening throughout our city. My name is Cheryl Sanchez Simmons. And on behalf of District two, I urge the passing of the agenda item 25. That is it as it is a good beginning to stopping these illegal explosives. I would also like to ask that Councilwoman Pierce have an open dialog with the residents in District two. Councilman Austin recently held a town hall on this issue for the residents in District nine. This would be productive for all of us that live in the area to come up with ideas and solutions to stop the bombardment here in District two. Thank you, city prosecutor Doug Halbert for giving us a tool to use to report those offenders directly to the city. I am hoping that law enforcement now begins to take this problem seriously and does not continue to turn a blind eye when they see the offenders shooting off murders like they have been seen doing in this past week. I would also continue to suggest an anonymous hotline that people can leave addresses and not fear retaliation. Just a reminder that the Facebook group Long Beach against illegal fireworks with over 1500 members has gathered data and does have a map of. Where these explosives are being detonated. Please keep the dialog. Open with the residents of Long Beach on this issue as it takes a community. To help solve this problem. I am still willing to be part of a resident task force, along with city leaders, to help come up with solutions to this problem. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, we have Claudia Vega. Your time starts now. Hi. I am a concerned resident of District nine. The reckless use of fireworks in our community have become a danger to ourselves and our property. A few years ago, my parents home caught on fire. And just last year, our neighbor's backyard went up in flames on 4th of July. My elderly parents cannot leave their home the days leading up to the 4th of July and fear of their home catching on fire again. No one should live in the fear. We find ourselves calling the police constantly on these offenders, but nothing is really done. The police have dropped by at the moment. They turn the corner. The explosions can begin again. As long as there are no consequences for these people, the fireworks will continue. We have to start enforcing the fines and increasing fines and or jail time. Otherwise, they will continue knowing that there are no real consequences. And just as a side note, Lakewood does have a fine of $2,000 a day. Just increase that apparently this year. We have to start making examples out of these offenders by by making them by enforcing the fines so that they receive the message that Long Beach will no longer tolerate this. Residents are putting their safety underline down the people that are terrorizing communities themselves. What we need is more police in our neighborhoods, especially District nine, that has always been neglected and deprived. These people using these explosive devices have no regard to other people's property. Last year we had a group of people lighting them up right next to our own garage. The police were called, but never came. My husband had to go outside and confront the group himself and take matters into his own hands. This can create an unsafe situation, which is why we need our calls to be taken more seriously. I've heard several testimonies from residents that are 911 calls are not being taken seriously. There have also been several fires here in our district that have probably been caused by illegal fireworks recently in the Deep Pass Park area. There was also a young man who recently lost his hand while lighting up this explosive. If it wasn't for a Facebook page, I mean, I would have never heard of this incident. We have to take these tragedies as opportunities to educate the public. When this happens in our neighborhood, the people we know, it's easier for us to relate. We need to do more. Some of the things some residents have discussed as possible solutions are to increase the fines and to impose them to use the Long Beach alert tax to continuously remind residents of illegal fireworks. We have also heard of the use of drones and other studies. And we need we need more police on bikes in our neighborhoods. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Next up is Jamie Larsen. Your time starts now. Thank you very much, Mayor Garcia, and the city council people this evening. I think there's been some really, really great feedback here and many of you have really had your thumb on the pulse of what's going on. I think that we can hear in everyone's voice and everyone's concerned and something that I would like to suggest and would be more than happy to for as far as the residents to help organize, is that it's a bit difficult to try to organize chaos in chaos, and I think it will realistic. We're going to understand that this is going to go through Labor Day. It did last year. And there seems to be a resolve in Long Beach this time of year. But it's like, yeah, well, it kind of happens this time of year. So how about when it calms down in the timeframe that it's not happening? Let's keep the momentum going. And I'd love to know how we as residents, all of these suggestions are great, but they're in midst of a panic. And so I love to keep the momentum going and find out exactly how we can pass these things. So the 2021 is our goal because I don't want to be a downer, but we're in this right now, and this fight is difficult for the police. It's difficult for our elected officials and obviously for our residents. So we could come up with suggestions and then have a better idea next year of how to do it. Like maybe a hotline that doesn't take up of dispatchers time, something that's more specific that we get when we know what's coming or that we know what's happening. A councilman earlier asked, and forgive me, I don't remember your name about surrounding areas. Pasadena. Just as an example, if you are caught with fireworks in your car, your car is immediately impounded. For anyone dealing with fireworks, you may spend up to a year in jail and the fines go up to $50,000. So there are different amounts that are around there. Another suggestion that I thought that we could work on throughout the year is everybody understands that when they go through a construction zone, if you are caught speeding, it's double the fine. So maybe we keep the thousand dollar fine from October to May and then June through September. It is a ridiculously high fine because I hate to say it, but fear changes people and having to pay a lot of money and the fear of being put in jail, that is unfortunately what creates change when we're talking about the situation. Drinking and driving became $20,000 and would literally ruin your life. And that's when things started to change. It's sad, but it's true. So my thoughts on this and just understanding more about it is I love to have a future meeting with more questions. I have a few more about the portal, so I'd love for that not to just sort of end with the summer and I am in District six, so I would be more than happy to help organize any district that wants to speak throughout the year and make sure that we're really well organized. And we don't just sort of forget this after Labor Day. But again, I want to thank our police department and our elected officials, because the Facebook page became 1500 people in less than a year. And I think. Next we have Kathleen. S Your time starts now. Hi. My name is Kathleen Shane. I live in District eight. I wanted to first thank you, Austin, for the meeting on June 15th and the action plan that you put together and Doug Hopper for the portal for us to report issues with fireworks. Jamie did mention about the drones and the cameras. I wanted to add that to see if that's something that's feasible. Also, our our the task force that we have for the four officers, are they on patrol on bikes or cars? And in addition, I just wanted to comment on some of the items that were brought up by council members. One of them was PTSD for the vets. But there's also a lot of people that do suffer with PTSD, not just veterans. So I wanted to know if that would open up to other people that do suffer from PTSD. Also, I agree with the California statewide. We need to look at the California laws. I am looking at one right now where it shows that there are misdemeanors for illegal fireworks and also felonies for illegal. Fireworks for quantity. I feel that that's where we need to address. Also, I wanted to. Talk about if we do the California state wide mandate, try to implement some laws regarding that, would that be able to have. Checkpoints. For people coming into our state that are coming. From. States that are high volume of purchasing these items? And I think that is all I wanted to say. Thank you. And I wanted to thank the city council and everybody for their passion. Regarding this issue. Thank you. Next, we have Samantha Hardy. Your time starts now. Hello, City Council. My name is Samantha Hardy, and I live in District seven of Long Beach. And I just have to say that something really needs to be done with these fireworks. I've lived in this district my whole life, and it has never been this bad. I hear all these signs that say fireworks are illegal in Long Beach, but you wouldn't be able to tell that if you came to my neighborhood. And I'm going to comment this in sort of a personal sort of a personal level right now. My mom's high blood pressure is through the roof with all these fireworks. And my uncle's going to be coming home in the next few days after having a triple bypass so he won't be really able to take them either. I've had to endure these fireworks and explosions through my whole ear surgery recovery process. And let's not forget about our furry friends that live not only in this house, but in all the other houses that are absolutely terrified. I've spoken to many of my neighbors and they're upset about this situation. My mom and I call every night and it seems like nothing is done. I'm part of the group on Facebook that's trying to help stop this. But when we're met with dial tones or operators who just don't care, then we kind of feel helpless. These explosions go on for hours and they are terrorizing our neighborhood. Something needs to be done because it's been going on since March and it will continue to go on. As a teacher, I know that sometimes teaching can only do so much, and these people who are firing off fireworks every night need more than a talking to or a warning. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you. Our last speaker is Seagram. Your time starts now. See Graham. Yes. Listen, my mom's on call every day. Hi. Is this sort of agenda item 25? Yes. I think it's absolutely disgraceful. My name is Caitlyn and I live in District three. I think it's absolutely disgraceful that you are continually continuing to criminalize people. We are calling for defunding of the police of liberty. And she. Instead of walking in the streets calling you to do council members, you have a constituency, you have a people to hear and you public people to act on behalf of. We are the people and we are asking you to defund the police. This measure on fireworks is absolutely ridiculous for the penalize and criminalize people. Shame on all of you. Shame on each one of you. And the price especially. Shame on you as my district comp person. This is absurd. We need to have a total restructuring of the things that are going on in the city. I yield my time. Thank you. And that concludes public comment for this item. Thank you. Let's go ahead and take a roll call vote then on this item, please. District one. I district to. I'm district three. I. District or. My. District by district six. Five. District seven. District seven. District eight. Hi. District nine. Hi. Motion carries. Okay. Thank you. Move carries on item 25. So now we're going to be moving on to item number 26, please.