California Police Used Drones to Spot and Fine Illegal July 4th Fireworks
by Jaron Schneider
A nighttime street scene shows fireworks exploding near a crowd and parked cars. Inset at the lower right, hands hold a controller, viewing a live camera feed of the event.
Multiple city police departments across California will be issuing fines in the mail over the coming days, thanks to a new initiative that sees the use of drones to identify the illegal use of fireworks on July 4.
The use of drones to spot violations is becoming more common, with police and fire departments around the state increasing their use. Police in Riverside spoke with local news about the use of drones to identify the use of illegal fireworks. Drones using infrared cameras scanned the skies for fireworks and located where they were being fired from. The teams manning the drones then made note of the address for the issuance of fines.
“We’re talking about the very illegal explosive mortars. The ones that are illegal in the state of California,” Riverside Police Department Spokesperson Officer Ryan Railsback tells KCAL News in Los Angeles. “You have to bring those from outside the state, or outside the country… This is dangerous for them to do. That’s why our city has taken this stance of saying it’s not allowed and putting a hefty fine attached to it.”
While the fire and police crews using drones didn’t specify their make or model, brands like DJI have been making specialized cameras tailor-made for police and first responders. For example, last year DJI announced the Zenmuse H30 system, which is compatible with its Matrice series drones and features a wide-angle camera, zoom camera, and infrared thermal camera. Once in the air, these drones would be able to easily spot fireworks with a camera system like this.
The fines can be extremely high. In Riverside, the city can cite a violation once every 24 hours at $1,500 each. But in other cities, the fine is substantially higher. Sacramento upped its fine to $1,000 for the first firework, $2,500 for the second, and $5,000 per firework after that.
“If we see multiple fireworks being used at a single property, we can stack the violations based upon how many fireworks they’re using,” Sacramento Fire Department Fire Marshal Jason Lee tells KCRA News. “So, it could be thousands of dollars per location.”
Sacramento authorities say that around 60 citations had already been prepared in Sacramento, with more likely to come as they continued to review drone footage. These “administrative citations” are issued to the property where they were spotted. If the property is being rented, the property owner will be the one to receive the fine. As such, Sacramento officials believe it is entirely possible that owners “might be issuing eviction notices” in response. Since fines are based on addresses, it’s not clear how they will be sent if the fireworks were being lit from public property, although Sacramento authorities say that if a firework was launched on city property (like a park), that fine increases to $10,000 each.
Fireworks are taken very seriously in California due to the risk they pose of starting fires. In a state where fires can be devastating, especially in cities like Los Angeles where the city butts up against fire-prone regions, city officials want to make their stance on firework use clear: don’t do it.
“If you think you got away with it, you probably didn’t,” Sacramento Fire Department Captain Justin Sylvia says to Fox 40 News. “What may have been a $1,000 fine for one occurrence last year could now be $30,000 because you lit off so many.”
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One resident, for example, racked up $100,000 in fines last summer due to the illegal use of fireworks.
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