NYC Mayor Introduces 'Fireworks Task Force' That Includes Undercover Police

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the creation of a task force to tackle the city's illegal fireworks problem.

"We are going to start a huge sting operation to go and get these illegal fireworks at the base, meaning everywhere they are being sold around New York City and even where they are being sold in surrounding states that we know are flowing into New York City," the mayor said during a Tuesday press conference.

The mayor said the sheriff's office, the New York City Fire Department and the New York City Police Department "have come together in an illegal fireworks task force. We will have over 40 officers from each of those three organizations, including 12 FDNY fire marshals."

De Blasio said the task force plans to go after suppliers through "undercover buys" and "sting operations" to try to cut off the supply of illegal fireworks to New Yorkers. The NYPD announced June 15 that it was getting rid of its undercover anti-crime officers in response to massive protests for police reform.

The news about the task force follows a 4,000 percent increase in complaints about illegal fireworks being set off across the city, from the first two weeks of June 2019 to the same period this year. The city's information line, 311, has reportedly received more than 6,300 complaints from June 1 to 19, which culminated in 1,689 calls on June 19 alone. Last year, only 27 complaints were called in to 311 over the same three-week period.

The graphic below, provide by Statista, illustrates the spike in complaints.

The mayor said that while this is not a new problem for the city, it is "more than we've ever seen it" and that city officials plan to go at it "hard now." However, de Blasio conceded that it would be difficult to catch perpetrators in the act of setting off illegal fireworks.

"The challenge a lot of time for fireworks is that particularly young people fire them off and then leave immediately, so it is very hard to find them and address it in real time in a way that actually would make a difference," the mayor said. He added that when the NYPD does have a chance to intervene, it will.

The mayor's announcement comes a day after demonstrators showed up at his home Monday night honking their horns and setting off their car alarms. Footage from outside the mayor's home, posted by NYC Scanner on Twitter, shows dozens of cars making a lot of noise.

"Hundreds are protesting outside Gracie Mansion in Manhattan right now after [the mayor] refuses to do anything about the insane fireworks the last few weeks plaguing NYC. Residents can't sleep, so they decided to not allow de Blasio to sleep tonight either," the tweet said.

Asked whether the announcement was influenced by the demonstration at his home, the mayor said, "Not in the least."

Newsweek reached out to the mayor's office for further comment but did not hear back before publication.