Fireworks complaints in Boston soar during coronavirus pandemic

Complaints over fireworks being set off from before dusk to after midnight have skyrocketed in Boston by a staggering 2,300% — rattling many who just want to sleep or fear it’s gunfire.

“People are frightened. People are losing sleep. Babies and kids are woken up. Pets are terrified. Our veterans and others with PTSD are experiencing real harm,” Mayor Martin Walsh said Wednesday at Boston City Hall, urging people to “stop it.”

Boston police received 1,445 calls for fireworks in the first week of June alone — up from just 22 in the same week last year, department spokesman Sgt. Det. John Boyle said. The department also received 656 calls about fireworks in May, up from 27 during the same month in 2019.

Not only are fireworks illegal in Massachusetts, but the nightly barrage of booms and bangs is causing real quality of life issues, Boyle said.

“Houses could burn down. People could be burnt,” Boyle said. “It’s worse for our people that suffer from autism, our veterans and … people that have lost people to gunfire as well as people who have dealt with any kind of gun violence. It can bring back a lot of post traumatic stress disorder.”

Lynn Morris, a 54-year South Boston resident, expressed her frustration at the daily disruptions.

“I know people are bored, and as the weather gets nicer and summer approaches, they want to celebrate, but this is not the way to do it. Living through this quarantine, we already have enough disruption to deal with in our lives, it’s just another unnecessary source of anxiety for so many,” Morris said. “It’s nonsense and completely selfish — enough!”

South Boston resident Annie Hargrave, 28, a Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center nurse who works rotating day and night shifts, said, “The constant disturbances — for extended periods at a time — are extremely bothersome and disruptive to my sleep.”

Complaints about fireworks are also lighting up Boston’s 311 hotline from people already on edge as protests against police brutality play out against the backdrop of a pandemic.

“There have been fireworks pretty much every single day for at least two months,” wrote one Roxbury resident. “It is incredibly loud and disconcerting, particularly with current events.”

City Councilor Julia Mejia, who is set to hold a community conversation about fireworks trauma at 6 p.m. Thursday on her Facebook page, said the blasts that have been getting progressively worse since April are now “out of control” across the city.

Cops have seized boxes upon boxes of fireworks recently and made a few arrests. While the automatic assumption is the fireworks are coming from New Hampshire, authorities say some of those being set off here aren’t sold in the Granite State.

People with information on where fireworks are being stored or sold are asked to call the police department’s anonymous crime stoppers tip line.

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/37qpxe3