Crime activity light

While the Fourth of July is a time for loud celebration and the boom of fireworks, law enforcement and safety officials in Newport Beach said they found Wednesday night mostly a quiet one. Costa Mesa was a little livelier, with police fielding dozens of fireworks complaints, but even that was considered routine.

Newport Beach had few fireworks complaints and hardly any drunk driving calls as of 9 p.m., police Lt. Jeff Leu said.

“We’re doing pretty well out there,” he said. “Hopefully everybody’s has a good time and behaves themselves.”

Dispatchers for the Newport Beach Fire Department said they too were having a quiet night, with no significant incidents.

Even freeways were quiet, according to California Highway Patrol dispatch records.

But Costa Mesa police were running all over the place even though no big crimes or accidents took place, said Lt. Loren Wyrick.

“We have units on 19 fireworks calls right now at this moment,” he said. “It’s a cloud of gunsmoke out there.”

Police weren’t just responding to complaints of illegal fireworks, but legal ones as well, Wyrick said. Neighbors might be angry about noise, or smoke, or a blocked street; they may even just disapprove of firecrackers in general, he said.

While Costa Mesa does allow “safe and sane” fireworks on Fourth of July, people break the rules in many ways, Wyrick said. Fireworks are only allowed on private property—not in parks or on the street, for example—and not up somewhere dangerous like a roof or a trellis either. They’re also banned after 10 p.m., though there were plenty of complaints before that time, Wyrick said.

The special police teams out to enforce the fireworks ordinance were going everywhere, Wyrick said.

“It’s not one particular neighborhood, it’s all throughout the city,” he said. “This is one of those times where all the different demographics here kind of converge on the same activity.”