Grand Jury Report shows Seaside’s efforts to reduce illegal fireworks to have had minimal effect

SEASIDE, Calif. (KION-TV)- The 2022-2023 Monterey County Civil Grand Jury Report released a report saying that the City of Seaside's efforts to reduce illegal fireworks have had minimal effect.

The nine page report which was published on Monday says that the city has had limited resources to address the issue.

The report shows the amount of calls that Seaside Fire and Police Departments have received during the Fourth of July holiday period that span from 2018 to 2022. The calls for service and confiscation of fireworks have increased during the four year period.

Law enforcement confiscated 100 pounds of illegal fireworks in 2022. However, the report also states that no additional illegal fireworks enforcement resources are dedicated for the rest of the year.

Seaside allows the sales and use of Safe and Sane Fireworks during designated days of the year. The only other city on the Monterey Peninsula that allows sales of Safe and Sane fireworks is in Marina. No Fireworks are sold in Monterey, Sand City, Del Rey Oaks, Pacific Grove and Carmel plus unincorporated areas of Monterey County.

The report says that the city needs to improve on distributing information in different languages for people to know when safe and sane fireworks can be used.

The Civil Grand Jury found out that the City of Seaside does not effectively communicate current information regarding a variety of City services to the public.

The Civil Grand Jury states that the City of Seaside does not track nor report complaints about
illegal fireworks received throughout the year expect for the Fourth of July period.

The jury was unable to find any evidence that calls received by 911 regarding illegal fireworks are tracked by the City.

The municipal code requires the Fire and Police Chiefs to prepare an Illegal
Fireworks Operations Plan each year to be presented to the City Council at the first
Council meeting in May.

The city municipal code requires the Fire and Police Chiefs to report back to the City Council around September 1st with an after-action report that should include: An evaluation of the effectiveness of the Illegal Fireworks Operation Plan that year, including a listing of any significant fireworks related incidents and Relevant incident statistics for the period of June 17 through July 16, and identification of fireworks related incidents.

The Jury did find that the the Illegal Fireworks Operation plans and After-Action
Reports are not readily available for public review on the City’s website.

The city of Seaside provided info to the Civil Grand Jury on those plans in the form of PowerPoint presentations purportedly given to the City Council. However, the jury did say that no evidence of those presentations was found in any City Council meeting agendas

The report states that there is no adequate regional task force dedicated to the issue and the Flock gunshot detection system which was approved by the City of Seaside cannot differentiate between fireworks and gunshots.

The Civil Grand Jury did recommend that the City fix the following issues to reduce illegal fireworks and here is what they said

• City needs to update their website to reflect current available services and government information
• More community outreach about which fireworks are legal and which are illegal.
• Provide illegal fireworks operations plans and after-action reports on the city's website.
• Maintain contact with Flock Safety to see if the gunshot detectors can be modified.
• City needs to put out quarterly reports focusing on the issue.

We have reached out to the City of Seaside and Seaside Police regarding the Civil Grand Jury report.

Seaside Police Chief Nick Borges did release a statement on the Civil Grand Jury report with the following.

I would just say that this very brand new collaboration is still in the infancy stage of developing ongoing support for the issue.

However, Seaside does more to proactively address the issue of illegal firework activity than any other agency in our region that I'm aware of.

Seaside Police Chief Nick Borges

The full report is here.