As New Yorkers continue to cope with professional-grade fireworks being set off at all hours of the night this summer, mayor Bill de Blasio has vowed to crack down on the noisy explosives. In a press conference on Tuesday, de Blasio — who surely has bigger issues to concern himself with — said he’s setting up a special task force to deal with the issue.
The task force, comprised of more than 40 law enforcement officers, will conduct sting operations and undercover buys to catch illegal fireworks vendors in the city. De Blasio said FDNY fire marshals and members of NYPD’s intelligence bureau will determine where the fireworks are being sourced from, while sheriff’s deputies will “address the problem at its root.”
Oh man. De Blasio just announced that he's forming a fireworks task force including over 40 law enforcement officers, including 12 FDNY officers, to respond to illegal fireworks. It'll involve "undercover buys" & "sting operations."
— Caroline Haskins (@carolineha_) June 23, 2020
“There’s a lot to do, and we have to do it quickly,” he said during the press conference. “This is an issue we can confront. It’s more than we’ve ever seen it earlier, but it’s not entirely new.”
The city has received a whopping 13,315 complaints about fireworks from Jan. 1 through June 21 this year, with 12,578 of them coming in June alone. Compare that to the 1,007 complaints they received between Jan. 1 and June 21 in 2019, and it’s obvious there’s been an uptick.
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