LETTER: Activist and LAPD Commander Discuss Fireworks, 911 Calls

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Illegal fireworks are a problem in Pacific Palisades. The entire town is  located in a very severe high fire hazard zone.

 

Local activist Krishna Thangavelu sent a letter to Commander Jonathan Tom, the Assistant Commanding Officer for Operations West Bureau, detailing safety concerns in Pacific Palisades. She wrote: “We had 10 minutes of fireworks go off on October 18, at 10 p.m. on Will Rogers Beach, on a red flag day.”

She offered ideas:

  1. URGENT:   We need a simple and effective strategy to apprehend individuals setting off fireworks or fires. And, we need that strategy NOW.
  2. 911 Strategy:  We need a better 911 response strategy for fire risk and this should be made available to all 29,000 residents.  If 911 is going to be too slow to respond (if at all) perhaps calls should be made to another dispatch service just for fire risk, and this can be one, more, or all of our private security firms. A quick zoom meeting from LAPD can request assistance from these providers.
  3. Arrest Strategy:  Option1:  Place a bounty on each suspect held for arrest and incentivize our private security firms $1000 per suspect held for arrest by LAPD.  This will be much more effective and cheaper and faster to implement than trying to manifest LAPD patrol officers that simply do not exist for nightly patrol.  This is my preference to bring a quick end to this firebug problem infesting this town.
  4. Arrest Strategy: Option 2:  LAPD can formally contract and deputize private security firms to patrol this town during evening hours.  If there are multiple firms, LAPD can divide up the work so multiple firms are engaged for different days of the week. This is a less preferred strategy since we will end up in bureaucratic hell and ongoing lack of government effectiveness in handling this existential risk.
  5. Teenage Delinquents: Inform local schools that all teenage delinquents convicted of crimes will be required to be expelled from schools in this town, per existing school charters that allow for expulsion.  We simply cannot risk the presence of individuals who are capable of burning this town down.

Captain Tom replied:

KT, thank you for your email and your ideas. You raise some very good points and demonstrate outside of the box thinking with your suggestions.

-Regarding 911, the Department has hired 84, 911 operators this year. It takes approximately one year for them to be fully certified, and many are still in training. It is very difficult to hire and retain our 911 operators so if you know anyone that is interested, we are hiring! Note: In 2024, 60% of 911 calls were answered within 15 seconds or less.

Keep in mind the following: If a caller gives a location for where the fireworks are coming from and advises the operator that the fireworks are in a Very Severe High Fire Hazard Zone, a “Code Two” call is generated which means that officers are to respond without delay unless they are assigned a “Code Three” call which would generally be for a violent crime in progress. If the caller does not indicate the fireworks are in a location designated as a Very Severe High Fire Hazard zone, a call will be generated, but it will be a “non-coded call” which means that the officer assigned the call should respond when available, but they can be re-assigned for higher priority calls (Code Two or Code Three).

If no location is given for the fireworks, i.e.: someone calls and says they merely see fireworks, there is no call for service generated, and the operator will merely announce over the radio that fireworks were seen in the area of, for example: Pacific Coast Highway and Temescal Canyon.

-Unfortunately, it is not true that the LAPD has funding to offer “bounties” or pay for private security to patrol for fireworks activity.

-Regarding expelling students from schools, that is something you will have to bring up to the schools or the school board. Releasing juvenile arrestee info to a school for a crime that does not involve the school would not be something that we can do due to juvenile confidentiality issues.

I do have some follow up questions for you:

-Are the fireworks being set off from the same location or does it vary from time to time?

-Are the fireworks being set off at the same or similar days and or times?

-Are there any eyewitnesses to the people setting the fireworks off? Any video? License plates or other identifying information?

-Do you have the names, telephone number, and dates and times of the 911 calls that were not answered or delayed in answering? If you have this info, I can research how long each call was on hold. You can provide this info directly to me for privacy concerns.

Note: If you don’t have this info, I would suggest that you inform your sphere of influence to keep a log of calls to 911 and 877 ASK LAPD so we can document the scope of the fireworks problem. We don’t deploy based on anecdotal information. When we have specific data, we can look for patterns and trends that can help us narrow down when and where to deploy our limited resources.

 

Sincerely,

Commander Jonathan Tom

Assistant Commanding Officer

Operations-West Bureau

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One Response to LETTER: Activist and LAPD Commander Discuss Fireworks, 911 Calls

  1. Lee Anne Sanderson says:

    Krishna, thank you so much for writing a letter on our city’s behalf. As you know, we have had some very close incidents and I agree with Commander Tom that you have some out of the box ideas that would be successful!! I appreciate commander Tom’s thorough response, and he helped us with some wording that I will definitely use. I am actually 100% sure that I will need to call 911 about illegal fireworks at some point in time, and I am grateful to have the above verbiage. We were lucky with our last big incident at Temescal and PCH that security was literally on the Asilomar Bluff when it happened and LAFD responded with lightning speed.

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