Don’t Get Caught With Illegal Fireworks

Someone’s Fourth of July weekend got off to an explosive start on Thursday morning when the New York Police Department seized 40 boxes of fireworks with a street value of $10,000 from a Staten Island man, reports the New York Daily News. The owner was charged with reckless endangerment and unlawful dealing in fireworks.

Whether it’s a rocket, a sparkler or a firecracker, MainStreet implores you, don’t get caught with anything illegal this weekend! Fines for possession various types of fireworks will vary by location, as well as by the number of fireworks you are caught with, but penalties typically run between $100 and $1,000.

“[Cops] are definitely going to fine you and they’re going to seize your stuff,” says Joseph Pollini, a former lieutenant commander at the New York Police Department and a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan. Law enforcement usually tries to keep fireworks from getting into the wrong hands in the first place, such as the time Pollini and colleagues busted a truck headed into New York filled with hundreds of thousands of dollars of explosives. (So, it’s a bad idea to sell fireworks, too!) But, he said to expect that police will be paying extra special attention to regular folks with smaller amounts of fireworks all weekend.

Of course, you do not want to be caught with contraband materials, but you also want to avoid medical bills from a fireworks mistake. According to a June 2006 Consumer Products Safety Commission study, in 2005 almost 11,000 people were treated in hospital emergency rooms for fireworks-related injuries and four people died. (More than half the injuries happened to young adults under the age of 20 and men were two times as more likely to be injured than women.) “Even people who are licensed to handle explosives take great precautions,” Pollini warns. “Let the experts handle it.”