Police Take Aim at New Year’s Eve Gunfire

In a stepped-up effort to prevent a deadly barrage of gunfire on New Year’s Eve, officials have enacted a citywide ban on munitions sales and announced plans Thursday to arrest revelers who shoot off firearms as part of holiday celebrations.

The campaign, coupled with an advertising blitz, is designed to stop people from firing guns into the air to mark the new year--an illegal and sometimes deadly tradition that police battle annually.

Assistant Los Angeles Police Chief Robert Vernon said teams of officers will be sent to neighborhoods throughout the city on New Year’s Eve to discourage the gunplay.

“We’re going to blanket the city with police officers,” Vernon told a news conference. “And there’s a good chance you’ll get arrested if you fire (a) gun into the air.”

Every year, scores of revelers ring in the new year in Los Angeles and other cities by shooting rounds of ammunition skyward. And each year, police say, errant bullets wound and sometimes kill people and damage property.

On New Year’s Eve 1988, 1,247 shootings were reported to Los Angeles police and two people were killed.

Things were better the next year: Shootings were down 43%, no one was killed and eight people were wounded, police say; 73 people were arrested under a new state law that makes such gunplay a felony.

“Every Jan. 1 is a time of celebration,” Vernon said. “Unfortunately, every Jan. 2 (is) a time we count the bullets that come back down to the ground. And unfortunately, we count some of those bullets in people.”

In the South-Central area of Los Angeles, where police say most of the shooting occurs, 685 officers--more than twice the normal number--will be on duty New Year’s Eve, said Deputy Chief William M. Rathburn, commander of the South Bureau.

Their orders this year, Rathburn said, are to stay out on the streets. In the past, police have often sought shelter from raining bullets under freeway overpasses or have stuck close to the station around midnight, he said.

“We will not do that this year,” Rathburn said.

In addition to the police deployment, officials are placing billboards throughout the city, airing public service announcements on television and radio and distributing thousands of flyers to homes and schools. All warn that a bullet fired into the sky can kill.

While officials have mounted similar efforts in the past, the weeklong ban on the sale of ammunition this year is new. Signed into law by Mayor Tom Bradley last May, it was first tested last July 4 and went into effect again on Christmas Day.

Bradley, who joined Vernon at the news conference, compared the random gunfire to “playing Russian roulette with the lives of community members.”

“In this city . . . we will not tolerate the illegal use of weapons to celebrate the coming of the new year,” Bradley said.

Undercover police officers are making the rounds at gun stores to look for violations of the ban, Vernon said. So far, none have been reported.

Owners of gun shops, meanwhile, labeled the ban a political ploy that misses the point. Some said that they applaud efforts to stop illegal gunplay on holidays but that prohibiting the sale of bullets is not the way to do it.

“If you can drive just a few hundred yards into Burbank (to buy ammunition), what have you accomplished?” said Barry Kahn, co-owner of B&B; Sales, a major gun store in North Hollywood.

“If you are really serious about the loss of life and limb and wanted to do something about it . . . how about banning the sale of liquor?”

Kahn said he has had to turn away dozens of customers since the ban took effect, at a loss of “several thousand dollars” a day. Many customers would normally be buying ammunition for holiday hunting trips, he said.

But police say that sales go up this time of year precisely for the New Year’s Eve gunplay.

Violating the munitions-sale ban is a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail and a $500 fine, Vernon said. Shooting a weapon into the air is a felony that carries a jail term of up to three years.