De Blasio planning HUGE STING OPERATION to catch illegal fireworks sellers after noisy protest at his NYC mansion

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio is forming a “fireworks task force” of over 40 officers from the police and fire departments after irate residents demanding action on the problem staged a noisy protest outside his home.

In what must be record timing for city government, de Blasio announced the new fireworks unit on Tuesday, less than 24 hours after a gathering of angry sleep-deprived New Yorkers gathered outside his Gracie Mansion residence to honk their horns, rev their engines, and loudly lecture him about civic responsibility and the importance of a good night’s sleep.

The task force will involve “undercover buys” and “sting operations,” and include 12 fire marshals, 10 police officers from the city’s Intelligence Bureau, and 20 members of the Sheriff’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation, according to a Tuesday press release. It will target “suppliers, distributors and possessors” both in and out of the city.

Acknowledging he was “taking seriously” the “quality of life problem and [the] noise problem,” de Blasio also warned that fireworks “can be dangerous.” Indeed, one video circulating on social media appears to show someone tossing a large lit firework onto a homeless man in Harlem; another shows someone lighting and throwing a firework into an open window, where it explodes indoors.

“We’re going to start a huge sting operation to go and get these illegal fireworks at the base,” the mayor promised reporters. “Meaning, everywhere they’re being sold around New York City, and even where they’re being sold in surrounding states that we know of flowing into New York.”

New Yorkers have been suffering under nightly fireworks bombardments for nearly a month, and many have taken to social media to demand answers on who’s bringing in what sounds like professional-grade explosives. Explanations range from psychological operations to destabilize minority communities, disgruntled police officers striving to make citizens demand their presence, cancelled stadium shows surreptitiously selling off their professional-grade explosives at cut-rate prices, or unscrupulous landlords plotting to offset their losses as the housing bubble pops by deploying the kind of gentrification-by-arson common in New York in the 1980s.

Fireworks are illegal across New York state, and while many neighborhoods have a tradition of setting off a few here and there - usually brought from neighboring states to celebrate the 4th of July or Memorial Day - the sheer number and intensity of this year’s pyrotechnics would seem to require a significant outlay of cash, something New Yorkers are critically short on after months of economic shutdowns and sky-high unemployment. Fireworks complaints have risen over 320 percent this month, with 8,967 complaints reported as of Tuesday, compared to a total of 28 in June 2019. 

While de Blasio attempted to reassure New Yorkers that the new task force would concentrate on netting the “big fish” selling the most fireworks, rather than the “kid on the corner,” many residents were understandably on edge about the notion of more police trolling their neighborhoods for troublemakers. The NYPD only last week disbanded its plainclothes anti-crime unit, reassigning 600 cops to “neighborhood policing” and detective work in response to a nationwide backlash against police brutality.

Others were outraged that de Blasio would take such quick action on the fireworks problem - presumably because city residents kept him up all night complaining - when his foot-dragging on other issues (like police accountability) has been legendary.

Many were cynical that anything would change, reasoning that the only people able to bring in and distribute professional-grade fireworks without getting arrested were the cops. Certainly, firefighters have been caught lighting off illegal fireworks in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and there are plenty of videos circulating showing police watching disinterestedly as locals set off ridiculous amounts of fireworks

De Blasio also announced plans to conduct “brief, five-minute fireworks shows” for each of the five boroughs starting June 29th, in collaboration with Macy’s. The usual massive Independence Day fireworks celebration was cancelled due to the pandemic. 

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