Authorities Trying to Muzzle Firearms on Fourth of July

As the Fourth of July approaches, some residents of the northeast San Fernando Valley are again dreading the holiday.

Too many people in the northeast Valley celebrate the day by shooting pistols, shotguns or automatic weapons into the air, police say. All those bullets shot toward the sky return to Earth at high velocity and threaten people below, they add.

On July 4, 1985, a young man was killed in Los Angeles when a bullet fired into the air penetrated his skull, police Capt. Valentino Paniccia said. And on New Year’s Eve, 1986, a 13-year-old boy from South-Central Los Angeles was killed by a stray bullet as he stood near a group firing shots into the air, authorities said.

In an attempt to discourage the gunplay, Los Angeles City Councilman Ernani Bernardi has allocated $2,000 from his office’s budget to put six extra police officers from the Foothill Division on the streets of Pacoima, Lake View Terrace and other communities in the area Monday. Meanwhile, 600 flyers, warning people about the dangers, are being distributed by neighborhood watch groups, the police and Bernardi’s office.

“It’s a very dangerous and very deadly habit people have acquired, and I’m sure they don’t realize the potential,” Bernardi said at a Friday news conference.

This is the second year Bernardi has provided money for beefed-up patrols on July 4.

Several members of northeast Valley homeowner associations applauded the move and said they hoped it would discourage gun-toting celebrants.

“A bullet does not have a name on it. You shoot a gun, lord knows where it ends up,” lamented Marie Harris of the Pacoima Property Owners Assn. She speculated that some people fire weapons because they figure the noise will blend in with the sound of fireworks.

The gun-shooting tradition has particularly upset residents of the Shelter Isle Mobile Home Park in Pacoima. Last year, residents presented police with a dish of 87 bullets they had collected on the trailer park’s grounds after the previous Fourth of July. Police suspect some of those bullets came from two nearby housing projects.