Police Issue Holiday Reminder: No Gunfire

Bullets fired in celebration, usually on New Year’s Eve and the Fourth of July, have killed at least 40 people since 1985 in Los Angeles County.

In recent years, however, a major publicity effort by city and county law enforcement agencies has helped reduce the carnage.

The Los Angeles Police Department says gunfire reports on New Year’s Eve in the city, for example, fell from 788 in 1992 to 500 last year.

A device known as the Shotspotter Communications System, pinpointing locations of shots fired to the nearest 25 feet, was tested at the sheriff’s Century station for all of last year. It reportedly reduced gunfire incidents by 60% in the covered area for the year and to just four last New Year’s Eve, in part because of enforcement and in part because of the publicity. It is now being expanded to a second area, the Industry station.

On Friday, law enforcement officials gathered at the Police Academy to exhort people to stop celebratory shooting.

They also named the winners of a poster contest in public schools on the topic. The grand prize winner, by 10-year-old Paravee Prakongsup of the Lorne Math/Science Magnet school in Northridge, reads “What Goes Up Must Come Down And May Kill.” It shows a boy firing a pistol into the air, and the bullet dropping into the head of a little girl.

Studies have shown that a bullet can travel two miles and land at 140 mph.

Sheriff Lee Baca called such shootings “reckless, stupid and a crime.”

Negligent discharge of a gun is a felony, even if no one is hurt. The penalty can be up to four years in jail for a single shooting, and up to 25 years if someone dies.