Another New Year’s Eve means some people will shoot guns into the air, with no thought or care where those bullets land.
But this will be the first New years when police have sensors in the most gunfire-prone areas of the city that almost instantly tell them where shots were fired.
Police Chief Darryl Forte warned in his blog last week that police will arrest and jail anyone caught firing a gun into the air.
“Residents should be able to celebrate the holiday safely and not be in fear of being struck by a stray bullet,” he said. “Firing a gun in city limits is against the law 365 days a year, and that includes New Year’s Eve.”
He noted the case of Blair Shanahan-Lane, who died at age 11 after being hit by a stray bullet fired by a man on July 4, 2011.
During the last New Year’s holiday, he said, police received notice of 149 shots fired from the evening of Dec. 31, 2011 to 5 a.m. on Jan. 1, 2012.
“In addition to being deadly,” he said, these shots disturb neighborhoods and divert police resources away from other crimes.”
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