Summer has come with a bang literally across the country this year as thousands of fireworks complaints have been called, from Ohio to Aurora to California. In Boston, complaints increased 64-fold compared to last year, while in New York, 12,582 calls have been to line 311 regarding illegal fireworks since June 1 of this year, compared to just 17 for the same period last year, according to the city’s open data source.
New Yorkers wanted to convey their frustrations to Mayor Bill de Blasio last night, and they went to his Manhattan residence in protest. Despite living in “the city that never sleeps”, they honked their horn in the first hours outside the Gracie Mansion singing: “We don’t sleep, you don’t sleep.”
New York scanner
(@NYScanner)Hundreds of people are protesting outside the Gracie Mansion in #Manhattan right now after @NYCMayor refuses to do anything about crazy fireworks in the last few weeks that have ravaged New York. The residents cannot sleep, so they decided not to allow Deblasio to sleep tonight either. pic.twitter.com/Kom1X7PTPM
June 23, 2020
In addition to the ongoing noise disturbance, it is likely to add more anxiety to an already very anxious moment due to a pandemic and ongoing protests against police brutality. Add that to the fact that no one seems to know what the reason for the increase in nighttime explosions is, and of course theories have emerged on the internet, trying to identify the reason for the increase. Here are a few.
It’s the sound waves, bro
Some have assumed that fireworks have not increased, it’s just that people are listening to them more. They point to the fact that cities are experiencing a lower level of background noise right now due to the pandemic, resulting in sound that travels faster and faster.
But with a scattered approach to shutdown orders across states, and with eyewitness reports showing fireworks until the wee hours of the morning, that theory probably can’t tell us the whole story.
Fireworks are sold retail for shows
In several places experiencing large numbers of complaints, there is a general ban on the sale of fireworks. Some experienced fireworks technicians have pointed out that fireworks seem too professional and expensive for the average gamer, so, with massive gatherings in some of these cities for quite some time, people have started to speculate that retailers are selling fireworks. artificial in some A kind of black market. Retailers, of course, dispute these claims, but there is a boom in legally purchased fireworks.
The police are just playing with you
A conspiracy theory is not complete without the participation of senior government officials and, of course, the police. To be fair, if the police are involved, it would not be the first time that the US police. USA He has engaged in unreliable tactics to spy on protesters and monitor blacks in particular.
So as fireworks task forces are created across the country, some speculate that fireworks are a fabricated spectacle, hoping to encourage people to feel like they need the police again, or even as a attempted psychological warfare. These claims are currently unfounded. Others have claimed that the police are willingly ignoring the complaints to demonstrate their worth after weeks of protests and calls to police departments. New York police said they had made eight arrests and confiscated a few dozen fireworks since the noise complaints began, meanwhile, some have wondered why police don’t bother about the problem when it’s on their own doorstep. .
New York firefighters were also caught in a movie that set off fireworks in a Brooklyn neighborhood last night. But it is not clear that the police have necessarily been lax in their approach. Buzzfeed reported this morning that dozens of police officers arrived with riot gear to quell fireworks in Brooklyn on Monday, threatening arrests.
Caroline Haskins
(@carolineha_)NYPD in Flatbush is appearing in riot gear to respond to people postponing fireworks pic.twitter.com/xIoTRduC7N
June 15, 2020
Or maybe people are just bored
The New York Times published an informed piece over the weekend, attributing the fireworks to a mix of boredom, relief and protest across New York.
Everyone from street children to firefighters has been seen firing fireworks after months of closure around the world, widespread protests, mass unemployment and unusual work hours. So it could also be that. Of course, that raises an even more important question: can’t people just go back to playing Animal Crossing?
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