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AZ police unit dedicated to illegal fireworks
A special unit with the Chandler Police Department will handle incidents involving illegal fireworks during the upcoming July 4th weekend, in an effort to free up patrols for other emergencies. FOX 10's Steve Nielsen reports.
CHANDLER, Ariz. - A Chandler police unit is going to try to catch illegal firework launches in action. They are taking it seriously and reminding people of the hefty fines associated with it.
The backstory:
According to the city's website, use of the following fireworks are banned:
- Sky rockets or bottle rockets
- Firecrackers
- Reloadable shell device or Roman candles
- Arials
- Single Tube Device w/ report (loud bang sound)
Violators could be fined, according to the city.
What we know:
No matter the opinion on fireworks, one thing that will be true for police departments is that their phones will be flooded with calls on the night of the fourth. The Chandler Police Department says they created the firework team to respond to all types of calls better.
"This dedicated group of officers frees up our patrol officers to be able to handle emergency nonemergency calls that aren’t firework-related in their areas," Chandler Police Department Sgt. Sam Wagner said.
The city says they take it seriously because the airborne fireworks are the ones that can cause serious injuries like they see every firework holiday. Additionally, they want to make sure no fires are started especially with how dry everything is right now.
What They Expect:
They say on the fourth they will be flooded with calls reporting illegal fireworks and want to make sure those calls go to the non-emergency line.
"Only so many lines for 911 calls, so the importance comes in to be able to free up those lines so when people are having emergencies, they can get through to our dispatchers quickly, and we can get them emergency services," said Wagner. "So that’s why we prefer to use our nonemergency line. These calls can be addressed at any time."
The Source: Information in this report was gathered from the Chandler Police Department, body camera footage, Mike Welsh of Red Hot Fireworks, and Sgt. Sam Wagner of the Chandler Police Department.