Valleywide : Celebrate Without Gunfire, City Warns

Ring in the New Year with a horn or a noisemaker, but don’t reach for your gun unless you want to risk going to prison.

That was the message Los Angeles city and police officials delivered at a Friday news conference to remind celebrants during the holiday season that it is a felony to shoot guns into the air.

Holding a handful of spent bullets--found on the rooftop of the Los Angeles Police Department’s 77th Street station on a previous New Year’s Day--City Councilman Joel Wachs, who represents much of the eastern San Fernando Valley, said that at least five Los Angeles residents were killed in such shootings from 1986 through 1989.

“This is a practice that is senseless, that is costly, and that is deadly,” said Wachs, who sponsored a 1990 law that made it unlawful to sell or give ammunition to anyone in the city on New Year’s Day or the Fourth of July, and in the week leading up to those holidays.

City officials said that the law and police crackdowns led to the arrests of 34 people during New Year’s revelries a year ago--46% fewer than the number in 1989.

Assistant Police Chief Ronald Banks said police received 650 reports of gunfire on last New Year’s Eve--also 46% fewer than the number of such calls in 1989. Wachs said he believes no Los Angeles resident has been killed in this type of shooting since passage of the ammunition law, the first of its kind in the nation.

But last New Year’s Eve, two East Los Angeles residents--one a toddler--were hurt by raining bullets, according to LAPD spokeswoman Lorie Taylor.