Wichita made money writing fireworks tickets, but did it make people safer?

Fire Chief Tammy Snow had three goals in mind for the first year of writing fireworks tickets: improving community safety, deterring illegal use of fireworks and educating the public.

So how did that go?

“As far as feedback or measurement, really I’m unsure or unclear if writing these citations had a positive impact on the actual safety of the community,” Snow told the Wichita City Council, presenting a review of this year’s enforcement efforts.

The city of Wichita received more complaints about illegal use, the number of firework-related injuries and incidents increased, and an officer was assaulted, according to Snow’s report.

Dollar-loss from property damage was down, but that’s excluding a July 6 bottle-rocket-caused house fire that did around $400,000 in damage because it was out of the date range when the damage is calculated, Snow said.

During a two-day enforcement period, from July 3 to July 4, 22 Wichita Fire Department and Wichita Police Department teams wrote 138 tickets for illegal fireworks in all six districts of the city.

One ticket was thrown out. Two people challenged their tickets. One of those people has already paid their fine and the other is pending the outcome in municipal court.

“Some citizens were extremely happy,” Snow said, including some who told her thank you personally.

Others, Snow said, were upset, especially those who received $250 tickets.

“We received a lot of negative feedback,” Snow said, “and also very critical of enforcement, including writing citations.”

By the time it’s all said and done, the city could collect as much as $34,500 in fines, Snow said.

Wichita collected $48,000 from fireworks sales permits sold to 32 fireworks tents operating in the city. The extra cost to the city for the two-day enforcement is estimated at $27,417, Snow said. That’s a net revenue of $20,583.

Coupled with fines, and assuming typical court costs associated with municipal court, the city will make more than $50,000 from the Fourth of July.

But aggressive enforcement put firefighters and police officers at risk, Snow said. In some instances, the enforcement teams backed out of hostile situations rather than write citations, Snow said.

“The biggest concern is that enforcement efforts involve significant risks to staff, because we’re not trained to address hostile citizens, groups of citizens, from the fire perspective,” Snow said.

“From a firefighter’s perspective, I don’t know that I could provide adequate training so they would feel comfortable standing out there,” Snow said.

To be effective in the future, police need to take over the enforcement efforts or firefighters need more training, Snow said.

Staffing was a problem, Snow said, and this year there weren’t enough teams working to put a dent in illegal firework use.

“You could stand and write a ticket and watch probably 50 yards in all directions illegal fireworks going around you. So, then we’d go to the next one and the same thing would continue,” Snow said.

To have enough officers to write fireworks tickets, Wichita police had to pull officers from their typical second-shift assignments, which left “skeleton crews” in some divisions, Snow said.

Two days of enforcement might not be enough to stop illegal fireworks use, Snow said.

“If we really want to put a grip on it, we need to do it the entire time that we make sales,” Snow said.

It’s unclear how illegal fireworks enforcement will go next year. City government is expected to come up with a plan for next year addressing the issues raised during the review.

“If we are able to go forward with this program next year, there’s a staff recommendation that we do something either with different dates or more teams, especially on the Fourth of July, which seems to be the most problematic,” City Manager Robert Layton said.

“There was talk of increasing education along with some of this,” Mayor Jeff Longwell said. “Maybe some of those dollars can be targeted at that, too.”

This story was originally published August 29, 2018 at 1:15 PM.