It’s Cool To Blow Stuff Up

The Times examines the effect of ten years of zero tolerance on illegal fireworks in the city:

Interviews and observations in six neighborhoods found that many people were brazenly flouting the fireworks laws. While Harlem and Park Slope were relatively quiet, fireworks could be seen and heard in neighborhoods in Queens and Manhattan, especially after dark.

In Washington Heights, on a corner of 171st Street near Broadway, a group of young men, women and children kept an eye out for the police as they set off a large display. As smoke filled the air, a police car rolled, lights flashing. Minutes later, more officers arrived to clear the block, but even as they worked, other explosions sounded in the distance.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said before the holiday weekend that they would continue to enforce a zero-tolerance policy for any illegal fireworks.

. . .

Residents interviewed across the city, for the most part, agreed that the Fourth of July was much quieter than it was before the city stepped up enforcement, but many said they noticed more explosions this year then in recent years.

The crackdown began in 1995, when Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani created a task force to combat unlawful fireworks and ordered the arrest of anyone caught with anything illegal, even sparklers. In 1996, the police seized 20,000 cases of fireworks worth an estimated $43 million.

The epicenter of the fight that year was in Ozone Park, where about 250 police officers set out to stop an annual block party given by John J. Gotti Jr., the head of the Gambino crime family.

This year, 1,115 cases of fireworks have been seized, a number that the police pointed to as a sign of success. They said that in the past 10 years the number of injuries from fireworks dropped by 86 percent, to 8 last year from 56 in 1995. They said the number of fires caused by fireworks on the Fourth of July had also fallen, to 203 last year from 1,063 in 1994.

Which is to say that Macy’s or no, New Yorkers still seem to love celebrating the birth of the nation by reenacting the sights and sounds of urban combat on neighborhood streets:

“It’s like a turkey at Thanksgiving,” said Joey, 16. He was hanging out on the streets of Maspeth, Queens, with a group of friends, waiting for the cover of night to begin the festivities with a boom.

Joey and his friends chipped in to buy about $1,000 worth of fireworks. Before the sun went down, they set off some of the smaller firecrackers, holding the big guns in reserve. Tucked away, they had the following illegal arsenal: “firecracker mats,” which are strings of 1,000 firecrackers whose crackling explosions last 10 minutes at a time; M-80’s, which were developed by the military to simulate gunfire; Blockbusters, which have the explosive power of half a stick of dynamite; and Pineapples, which combine two Blockbusters for a jaw-rattling explosion.

They also had what are called mortars, essentially metal tubes used to launch larger fireworks, the kind that explode into a rainbow of colors in the sky.

“It’s cool to blow stuff up,” said Jonathan, 16. Like others who were setting off illegal fireworks and were interviewed, he would not give his last name.