Fireworks are out of control in L.A. Here are 5 things experts wish you knew
One thing I still can't get used to living in L.A. is the Bayhem-level of firepower Angelenos bring to bear on the Fourth of July.
My neighbors have already started setting them off.
By all accounts — and there are many — we are living in the illegal firework capital of the United States. That's not just because all fireworks are illegal in the City of Los Angeles, which the doctors, public safety officials and pollution experts I talked to about their dangers are at pains to point out.
Many immigrant Angelenos come from cultures where DIY fireworks are common, and we're an easy drive from places where they're cheap and legal. With few exceptions, the penalty for setting off professional-grade pyrotechnics is small and difficult to enforce.
Nationwide, the problem is much bigger now than it ever was. In 2024, almost 15,000 Americans were treated for firework-related injuries — a jump of more than 50% from the year prior, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission. In 2025 alone, Cal Fire and its partner agencies have confiscated more than 600,000 pounds of illegal fireworks.
Still, the folks who most want you to stop buying M80s — city managers, ER doctors, Smokey the Bear — know their pleas fall on deaf ears. The quest to save fingers, lungs, palm trees and the state budget from fireworks was described to me as 'quixotic' and 'Sisyphean.'
Even January's firestorm is unlikely to tame our passion for pyrotechnics, they said. At least one expert told me he thinks 2025 will be 'worse than it's ever been,' describing fireworks as a kind of Freudian pressure valve for communities on edge.
Here are five things experts wish you knew about your cache of emotional-support explosives.
'We have among the worst air quality in the country on the night of July 4 into July 5,' Dr. Scott Epstein of the South Coast Air Quality Management District said. 'Over the past 15 years, we have seen an upward trend.'
Remember those two dozen semitrucks worth of confiscated fireworks I mentioned earlier? Golden State taxpayers foot the bill to ship them to Ohio, Hawaii and Massachusetts to dispose of.
'Think about packaging up a couple thousand pounds of fireworks and sending them to Ohio — it's going to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars,' said Cmdr. David Barrett, head of MySafe:LA.
Multiply that a couple hundred thousand times, you're looking at a budget black hole.
'The number one thing kids tell us is: 'We don't want fireworks, but our parents bought them,'' Barrett told me.
'The message doesn't need to be for kids, it needs to be for parents,' he said. 'Something like: 'How do you feel about your kid having four fingers?''
'The things I've seen the most are loss of a finger or a hand, or severe damage to the eye,' said Dr. Jeremy Swisher, a sports medicine doctor in the orthopedics department at UCLA. 'Burns are the most common.'
Many of those burns come from sparklers.
'When it's over 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, holding it for a few seconds can cause a lot of damage,' the doctor explained. 'It can cause deeper burns into the skin, which can lead to the need for skin grafting, many surgeries and needing to stay in the hospital for a week or more.'
'If you look forward to the next three years, we have the World Cup, the Super Bowl, and the year after that we have the Olympics,' Barrett said. 'They're all summer events, so the potential for out-of-control fireworks is significant.'
'The last thing we need is for the Hollywood Hills to burn down because of fireworks.'
Today's great photo is from Times contributor Yasara Gunawardena. This year's jacaranda bloom in L.A. was short a few trees following the January wildfires, but experts say many burned trees will recover.
Kevinisha Walker, multiplatform editorAndrew Campa, Sunday writerKarim Doumar, head of newsletters
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Los Angeles Times
2 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
Lawmakers are right to try to bar ICE agents from hiding their identities
The images are jarring. Across the country, federal law enforcement officers in plain clothes and wearing ski masks and balaclavas are seizing and detaining protesters, students and even elected officials. These scenes evoke images of government thugs in violent regimes disappearing opponents. This is not how policing should look in a democratic society. Which is why everyone — regardless of political affiliation or stance on immigration enforcement — should support bills being introduced in Congress to address this growing problem. Three pieces of legislation — under consideration or expected soon — would prohibit masking by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, including one Thursday from Reps. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) and Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.) and one expected Friday from Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.). These are obvious, common-sense measures that shouldn't need to be codified into law — but given the reality today, and what's being done on streets across the country, they clearly do. In the United States, those tasked with enforcing the law are public servants, answerable to the people through their elected representatives. Wearing uniforms and insignia, and publicly identifying themselves, are what make clear an officer's authority and enable public accountability. That is why U.S. policing agencies generally have policies requiring officers to wear a badge or other identifier that includes their name or another unique mark, like a badge number. That is why — not so long ago — one of us wrote a letter on behalf of the Justice Department to the police chief in Ferguson, Mo., to ensure that officers were readily identifiable during protests. This letter was sent by the federal government, in the middle of the federal civil rights investigation of the Ferguson Police Department, because ensuring this 'basic component of transparency and accountability' was deemed too important to hold off raising until the end of the investigation. Exceptions have long been made for scenarios such as undercover work — but it has long been understood that, as a general rule, American law enforcement officers will identify themselves and show their faces. This foundational democratic norm is now at risk. In February, masked ICE officers in riot gear raided an apartment complex in Denver, one of the first times Americans saw agents hide their faces on the job. In March, the practice came to widespread attention when Tufts University doctoral student Rumeysa Ozturk was snatched by plainclothes ICE officers, one of them masked, while walking down a street in Somerville, Mass. Throughout the spring, bystanders captured videos of masked or plainclothes ICE enforcement actions from coast to coast, in small towns and big cities. ICE says it allows this so officers can protect themselves from being recognized and harassed or even assaulted. ICE's arguments just won't wash. Its claims about how many officers have been assaulted are subject to serious question. Even if they were not, though, masked law enforcement is simply unacceptable. At the most basic level, masked, anonymous officers present a safety concern for both the individuals being arrested and the agents. People are understandably far more likely to disregard instructions or even fight back when they think they're being abducted by someone who is not a law enforcement officer. If the goal is to obtain compliance, masks are counterproductive. It's far safer to encourage cooperation by appealing to one's authority as a law enforcement officer — which almost always works. Related, there is a very real and growing threat of law enforcement impersonation. There has been a disturbing uptick in reported incidents of 'ICE impersonations,' in which private individuals dress as ICE or law enforcement officials to exploit the trust and authority invested in law enforcement. Just this month, the assailant in the recent assassination of a Minnesota lawmaker was posing as a police officer. Other examples are abounding across the country. As Princeton University noted in a recent advisory, when law enforcement officers are not clearly identifying themselves, it becomes even easier for impostors to pose as law enforcement. Replicas of ICE jackets have become a bestseller on Amazon. Most fundamentally, masked detentions undermine law enforcement legitimacy. Government agencies' legitimacy is essential for effective policing, and legitimacy requires transparency and accountability. When officers hide their identities, it sends the clear message that they do not value those principles, and in fact view them as a threat. Federal law currently requires certain clear accountability measures by federal immigration enforcement officials, including that officers must identify themselves as officers and state that the person under arrest is, in fact, under arrest as well as the reason. That should sound familiar and be a relief to those of us who are grateful not to live in a secret police state. But those words are cold comfort if you are confronted by someone in street clothes and a ski mask — with no way to know if they are who they say or whom to hold accountable if they violate your rights. ICE officials cannot be allowed to continue to enforce our laws while concealing their identities. Transparency and accountability are what separate democracy from authoritarianism and legitimate law enforcement from the secret police in antidemocratic regimes. The images we are seeing are unrecognizable for the United States, and should not be tolerable for anyone. Barry Friedman is a professor of law at New York University and author of 'Unwarranted: Policing Without Permission.' Christy Lopez is a professor from practice at Georgetown University School of Law. She led the police practices unit in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice from 2010-2017.
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
As Ice infiltrates LA, neighborhoods fall quiet: ‘We can't even go out for a walk'
It has been eerily easy to find street parking in Los Angeles's fashion district this week. In the nearby flower district, longtime vendors have locked up stalls. And in East LA, popular taquerías have temporarily closed. Neighborhoods across LA and southern California have gone quiet since the Trump administration ramped up immigration raids in the region two weeks ago. The aggressive arrests by federal agents have ignited roaring protests which the administration tried to quell by mobilizing thousands of national guard troops. Last weekend, Americans protested the raids and other administration policies in one of the biggest ever single-day demonstrations in US history. But immigration enforcement in LA has only intensified. In downtown Los Angeles, Lindsay Toczylowski, the executive director of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center (ImmDef) was alerted on Wednesday morning that federal agents in masks and bulletproof vests had ambushed a man who was biking down the street, not far from her office, and had arrested him. She and a colleague rushed outside, to see if the agents were targeting anyone else. Later, they puzzled over how and why agents had decided to target this man. Did they have a warrant? Did they even know who he was? Or was it just that he looked like he could be an immigrant. 'It feels so invasive. They're everywhere,' she said. It was the type of arrest that has immigrants across the region weighing if, and when, it will be safe to go outside. In LA's Koreatown, a dense, immigrant neighborhood just west of downtown, children were playing at Seoul international park, but not as many as usual. Outside Jon's grocery, there were only a few street vendors who had set up shop – where normally there would be a dozen or more. Guillermo, 61, had come out, with his wife, to set up their small stall selling medications, vitamins and toiletries. 'To be honest, we're scared,' he said, nervously raking his fingers through his tightly coiled hair. They'd stayed home, stayed away, for days – but this week, they found out that their landlord would be increasing their rent by $400 starting next month. 'We need to make money.' Then again, he wondered if it was worth the risk to come out. There was hardly any foot traffic. No customers. 'They're all Latino,' he said, shaking his head. 'They're all scared to come out.' In normal times, Lorena would be selling tamales nearby – at least until about 5pm. Fifty years old, with with slick black hair, she could pass for quite a bit younger. She'd spend the afternoon chatting with the other vendors – the frutero down the block, and the woman who sells candies and nuts. Sometimes, she'd chat with the young unhoused men who camp out on the street and offer them some tamales. 'They've had some bad luck, some [have] taken some bad steps,' she said. She's known some of them since they were children – she used to sell tamales outside Hobart Elementary a few blocks away. She's been selling tamales in K-town for decades. The neighborhood has changed a lot since she first came here from Oaxaca, aged 20, she said. Still, most faces are familiar; she's been selling tamales to generations of people out here. In the evenings, she'd head home, get changed and head to the park for a walk. On summer days like these when her grandchildren are off school, she'd bring them to the playground, or maybe take them out to the movies, as a treat. 'Not this week,' she said. She has barely stepped outside her home in days. Neither has her husband, who normally works as a day laborer – soliciting short-term construction jobs outside of the nearby Home Depot. On the day agents flooded the megastore's parking lot, indiscriminately cuffing laborers and vendors, a friend of her son had warned them not to come out, she said. This week has felt a bit like the first few weeks of the pandemic, like the lockdown. 'Well, now this is worse than the pandemic,' she shrugged. 'Because we can't even go out for a walk.' She can't even put on a face mask and head to the grocery store – her kids, who have legal immigration status, have been going to the market and running errands for her and her husband. 'We're not really doing anything right now,' she said. It has meant that she hasn't been able to send as much money to her mother in Mexico, and to her brother, whose health has been deteriorating rapidly because of liver cancer. 'I know he's suffering. He's suffering a lot,' she said. 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But last weekend, Yurien spent hours refreshing her search in the Ice online detainee locator system, hoping it would tell her where her father had been taken. 'We went days without knowing, without any idea what had happened to him,' she said. Later, she learned that agents had kept them in a van for more than eight hours, without food or water, or access to a restroom. Then Ice transferred them to the Adelanto detention center, in California's high desert. Local Zapotec community organizers were able to help her find him – and more than a week after his arrest, Yurien was able to put funds into his commissary, so he could call her from the detention center. 'He sounded so sad, he was crying,' she said. Yurien hasn't really felt hungry since then. She had planned to matriculate at Los Angeles Trade-Technical college, but she deferred her plans so she could take over her father's responsibilities – including the care of her four-year-old brother, who has a disability that requires close monitoring and regular doctors visits. 'It's been so hard. I've always been a daddy's girl,' she said. 'But I can't really show my emotions, because I have to stay strong for my mom, for my siblings.' Lucero Garcia, 35, said she could relate. 'I'm so overwhelmed, I'm so stressed,' she said. 'I still wake up every day and act like nothing ever happened, because I feel like I'm the main person in our family that kind of keeps it together.' Nothing has been the same for her family since her 61-year-old uncle, Candido, was arrested while working at his job at Magnolia Car Wash in Orange county, just south of LA. It was one of more than two dozen car washes in the region that have been visited by immigration agents, according to the Clean Carwash Worker Center. Before her evening shift at work on Tuesday, Garcia put on her professional black trousers and white knit top, and drove more than 90 minutes north to the Adelanto detention center, and met with congress members who were seeking to meet with constituents who had been transferred there, to investigate reports of unsanitary and unsafe conditions inside. After local representatives confirmed that detainees had been denied clean clothes and underwear for days, she stood outside in the searing desert heat and shared some words about her uncle – who had lived with her family for years and has been like another father to her. 'This is just crazy,' she said. 'I've never talked to the press before, to give speeches like this.' She had to rush back home right after to wrap up errands, and head to work. Garcia has her green card, and her sister has citizenship – so the two of them have taken shifts running errands for their entire family – picking up groceries and prescriptions, getting kids to and from playdates and activities – so that those without documentation don't have to risk stepping outside. At home, the conversations have been heavy. Some of her family members are meeting with notaries to arrange paperwork, so that she can take custody of their children, should they get arrested or deported. 'I'm so glad it's summer vacation, that none of our kids are in school right now,' she said. 'At least we don't have to worry something will happen while they're at school.' Out in her neighborhood, restaurants sit half empty, and there's no more lines at the gas station. Inside her house, it's been oddly quiet, too. Most all of Garcia's family lives in Orange county – within 5 or 10 minutes from her – and most days a cousin or an uncle would swing by, unannounced, bringing a dish or even just ingredients to cook up. Garcia is famous for her beef birria and pozole. These days everyone is staying confined to their own homes. Last weekend, they nearly forgot it was father's day. 'The vibe is not there to be celebrating,' she said. 'And even with the smallest gathering, there's a risk to leaving the house.' And there's guilt. 'Like, how can you be having dinner when others are in detention without enough food? The guilt doesn't let you move forward.' The Guardian is not using the full names of some people in this article to protect them and their families.
Chicago Tribune
4 hours ago
- Chicago Tribune
Law & Order column: Man guilty in hit-and-run pedestrian death
An Arlington Heights man has pleaded guilty to a charge related to the 2022 hit-and-run death of a pedestrian in Lake Zurich, according to Lake County prosecutors and court records. Gary Bozza, 68, pleaded guilty to a felony count of leaving the scene of a fatal crash in a negotiated plea with Lake County prosecutors. Authorities said Bozza struck and killed a man named Jose Portillo at 11:43 p.m. on Dec. 17, 2022, along South Rand Road. Police had responded to the 700 block after receiving reports of someone walking in the roadway. An officer arrived and saw a dark SUV strike the man later identified as Portillo. Portillo, who was in his late 30s, was pronounced dead at the scene. After an investigation by authorities, a Lake County grand jury indicted Bozza in January of 2024. Under the terms of the sentence, Bozza was placed on probation for 30 months and ordered to perform 200 hours of community service, according to court records. He was also ordered to pay about $3,000 in fines and costs. In return for the guilty plea, prosecutors dropped the more serious charge of failure to report a crash involving death. Holiday patrols It seems like the Fourth of July has arrived suddenly. Lots of folks will probably be on the road since the holiday is creating a three-day weekend, and local police departments are alerting motorists that there will be a visible law enforcement presence. Many local departments have announced that they will be increasing enforcement over the holiday period. Waukegan police have stepped up enforcement for things like impaired and unbelted motorists, a campaign that will extend through the holiday weekend. The Lake County Sheriff's Office, and police in Gurnee and Mundelein are among other agencies across the county and state that are participating. So, as the saying goes, drive sober or get pulled over. Meanwhile, Waukegan and Gurnee police, along with their counterparts in Lake Villa and Lindenhurst, will participate in a regional safety initiative effort on Tuesday that is centered on the Illinois Route 132/Grand Avenue corridor. 'Drivers traveling along Route 132 can expect increased police presence and high visibility enforcement throughout the day. But the ultimate goal isn't writing tickets. It is to change behavior, reduce crashes, and save lives,' Waukegan police said in a social media post. Underage alcohol sales Local police agencies recently completed a spring sweep of area businesses that sell alcohol to ensure they are not selling to underage customers. The Lake County Underage Drinking and Drug Prevention Task Force said it worked with nine police departments. Young adults carrying identification that showed they were younger than 21 entered 159 establishments to attempt to buy liquor. The underage buyers were turned away at most businesses, though there were eight violations reported. In North Chicago, police noted four violations at the 10 businesses checked. 'Consistency from community to community and monitoring underage drinking issues will help us be successful in addressing this problem and saving lives,' Task Force Chairman Steve Husak said. 'Our desire is to see 100% compliance, but it is refreshing to see that nearly 95% of the businesses that were checked realize the seriousness of this issue and did not sell alcohol to the underage participants.' No violations were reported at the 102 establishments that were checked in Antioch, Buffalo Grove, Gurnee, Lake Forest and Lake Zurich. Knife threat charge A man with a previous conviction for stabbing a roommate was arrested this month on charges that he threatened three people with a knife, according to the Lake County Sheriff's Office. Joshua W. Marksberry was taken into custody Wednesday night following an incident earlier that day at a home in the 15900 block of West Wadsworth Road in Wadsworth. The sheriff's office said it was called at about 9:40 a.m. after witnesses reported that Marksberry, who lives at the address, had pulled a knife on a victim and threatened them and another resident of the property. Marksberry fled on foot, police said, and a man matching his description was seen at about 8:30 p.m. near Wadsworth and Dilleys Road. Police located Marksberry in a tent in a nearby wooded area, and he was taken into custody and charged with aggravated assault. According to court records, he was sentenced to 14 years in prison in 2018 for aggravated battery.
