SOUNDING OFF:

The 2008 Fireworks Response Plan After Report was made available on the Costa Mesa City website on Aug. 4. Fiscal impact: $48,747 in costs to the city and another $62,700 to a few unlucky people who had their property damaged. We closed down the job center for a bit less than that.

The Costa Mesa Police Department reported that the focus of its response would be education. Police had 520 calls for service, confiscated several hundred pounds of illegal fireworks, yet made only one arrest and issued only one citation. The report makes it clear that the Costa Mesa Police Department felt it had to choose “making educational contacts and warnings rather than taking enforcement action” because of its “enormous volume of calls.” The department also chose to treat “anonymous calls as general broadcasts.”

Our first Fourth of July in Costa Mesa, my husband and reported our neighbors. As a direct result, our mailbox was filled with legal fireworks and set on fire, and a brick of firecrackers was thrown over our fence. We suggest that the police take every call seriously and respond to anonymous calls as they would any other.

The police report is a bit self-congratulatory when they report on fewer arrests, (even though they report the decision to forgo enforcement). It would be a failure on the police department’s part then, to make arrests and give citations when they choose education over enforcement.

Our City Council in the past has been very outspoken requesting that the police department enforce laws, even federal laws, at great expense to our city. I wonder why council members would consider fireworks laws less important. Maybe those who commit fireworks violations are of a less offensive hue?

The fire department’s report seems to comment on a different day altogether. It reports that confiscating the illegal fireworks was “much more difficult and far less successful. Observed violations were difficult to trace to the source and when those areas were located, violators disappeared into the crowd or the illegal fireworks were removed from plain view prior to our arrival. Obviously, large fire apparatus are highly visible and any chance to catch violators ‘in the act’ of discharging illegal fireworks is slim.”

In fact, the fire department gauged its effectiveness in curbing illegal fireworks use as “negligible.”

If the fire department had set the goal of “educating” and “warning” rather than confiscating, it would have been all aglow in its success. I mean that literally.

The report also remarks that there were no negative public comments at the City Council meeting following the holiday. Showing up at the meetings is not a requirement, (thank goodness,) and making negative comments prior to receiving the full report would have be prejudicial. This is the time for commentary, and I hope my fellow Costa Mesans will download the report from the city website in the forms/documents section: www.ci.costa-mesa.ca.us/ docs/fireworks-reports/2008- 4th-of-July-After-Action- Report.pdf

SUZIE MANN is a resident of Costa Mesa.