Emergency dispatchers in Santa Rosa had a busy Fourth of July night. There were 566 911 calls made about illegal fireworks in the city between 8:00 p.m. and midnight on the Fourth. That’s actually down from recent years. Dispatchers fielded 831 calls about fireworks last year and 756 on the Fourth of July in 2020. Santa Rosa Fire Marshal Paul Lowenthal says they’re limited on what they can do to actually charge someone with a fireworks related crime.
“When we lack the ability to identify a suspect (there is no cameras in the areas, time of day and the darkness), the investigations don’t tend to go very far unfortunately,” says Lowenthal. “Even when we see commercial grade fireworks being set off, by the time you pull down a street, people are often long, long gone.”
Santa Rosa police only got an average of 350 calls about fireworks during each Fourth of July between 2017 and 2019.