Did you make a fireworks complaint in Pierce County and no one showed up? Here’s why

Linda Harrison was about to get into bed for the night when she heard a banging on her door.

The Midland resident in unincorporated Pierce County wondered who it could be at 9:15 p.m. on July 4. When she opened the door, she was greeted by a couple who said they were driving by when they saw a firework land in the ditch near her property and start to smolder.

“It reached my fence within minutes,” Harrison said about the fire that started from the spark. The couple helped her put out the fire with buckets of water, as her garden hose didn’t reach the side of the house easily. Harrison had just had surgery, preventing her from lifting more than 10 pounds.

She called 911 at about 9:17 p.m., and firefighters arrived at about 9:40 p.m., Harrison said. By that time, the fire was out.

“They came and they just looked around and said: ‘You guys did a good job putting it out, you’re safe,’” Harrison said.

Harrison became emotional talking about the couple who helped her. She said she couldn’t sleep that night after they put out the fire, thinking about how she could have been asleep or away from home to watch a public fireworks display when the flames started. She later posted her story on Reddit , and agreed to talk to The News Tribune about her experience.

Her 911 call was one of over a thousand fireworks-related reports to Pierce County law enforcement from 6 a.m. on June 28 to 6 a.m. on July 8. The majority of those reports were non-emergency complaints submitted to the online reporting system FireworksReport.com, according to data from South Sound 911.

Fireworks regulations vary across cities in Pierce County.

While fireworks are prohibited within Tacoma city limits, certain types are permitted during designated time windows in cities like Fife and Lakewood. In Midland and other areas in unincorporated Pierce County, fireworks are permitted from 10 a.m. to 11:59 p.m. on July 4 and several hours before New Year’s Day, and limited to certain kinds, according to Pierce County’s website .

If you called 911, filled out the FireworksReport.com form or called South Sound 911’s non-emergency phone number about fireworks near you around the Fourth of July, here’s what might have happened behind the scenes.

How do police enforce fireworks laws?

FireworksReport.com received 910 complaints while the system was open from 6 a.m. on June 28 to 6 a.m. on July 8, according to South Sound 911 community relations manager Kris McNamar.

South Sound 911 launched the site in 2022 to allow people to report non-emergency complaints about illegal fireworks online, rather than calling 911. The purpose was to free up 911 call takers to focus on emergencies, she said.

Over that same period of time, June 28 to July 8, there were 201 fireworks-related entries in South Sound 911’s computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system, meaning that there were 201 incidents when a person called 911 or the agency’s non-emergency phone number and reached a dispatcher.

McNamar said that complaints submitted to FireworksReport.com are electronically routed to the law enforcement agency responsible for complaints in their jurisdiction. The News Tribune reported on the list of police jurisdictions participating in the online system earlier this month.

That means that South Sound 911 staff don’t dispatch the complaints.

“FireworksReport.com takes the complaint out of the normal dispatch routine , which frees up call taking and dispatch staff to focus on emergencies,” McNamar wrote in an email.

An emergency might include someone getting injured, an active fire or crime, or an event with an immediate danger to people or property, in which case a person should call 911, according to South Sound 911 .

Instead of receiving the complaint directly from a dispatcher, police agencies can access FireworksReport.com reports in a few ways. One way is by looking up reports in their database, according to McNamar.

For example, officers can use different tools through an in-house system known as “Incident Inquiry” that South Sound 911 supports on mobile devices, McNamar told The News Tribune. They simply need to type in the event code for a fireworks complaint and can view the report. Officers use this system to view other crime reports as well.

Agencies can also designate persons to receive complaints from the website via email at agency-specified intervals, such as in half-hour, hour or two-hour intervals, according to South Sound 911 deputy director of operations Mark Mears. He said that agencies could request to receive the emailed reports every five minutes, but that checking on them in 30- or 1-hour increments to see if any complaints require a follow-up response is more reasonable given the other calls police are juggling.

According to McNamar, agency-designated persons at the police departments in Bonney Lake, Buckley, Edgewood, Orting, Sumner and University Place opted to receive such emails at their specified intervals while the website was actively taking complaints. The Lakewood Police Department requested a report of fireworks complaints at the end of the period when the website was active.

“We have the utmost sympathy for those that are concerned about fireworks,” McNamar said. “We understand the fire danger, safety concerns, the PTSD and pet anxiety . . . and hope that someone who would call with a fireworks complaint would also understand the need for us to prioritize other emergencies occurring at the same time.”

How many fireworks complaints did police respond to across Pierce County?

McNamar declined to share a breakdown of how many complaints were routed to each agency because she said the data ultimately belongs to the agencies and not South Sound 911. The News Tribune reached out to multiple Pierce County law enforcement agencies to learn how they responded to complaints from June 28 to July 8.

Tacoma Police Department spokesperson Detective William Muse said that the data requested on fireworks complaints was not readily available but could be accessed with a public disclosure request. The News Tribune submitted a request that is pending.

Pierce County sheriff’s spokesperson Sgt. Darren Moss shared numbers showing that the department received 203 complaints through the FireworksReport.com website and 46 from dispatchers.

Moss said the priority for fireworks complaints can be much lower than more serious crimes the department might have to deal with around the holiday. Each incident is assigned a priority number, with 1 being the most urgent and 5 being the least urgent. Moss said that the sheriff’s department had to respond to other crimes including shootings, vehicle accidents and more around the holiday, and calls about fireworks that don’t pose an immediate or serious danger tend to take lower priority than other incidents.

The Lakewood Police Department received 79 fireworks complaints from FireworksReport.com and 15 fireworks-related calls from dispatchers, for a total of 94, according to Sgt. Charles Porche. The 79 website complaints included concerns about people lighting fireworks outside of city-designated time windows and about the noise caused by the explosions. The 15 dispatch calls generated an officer response and included concerns about fireworks endangering a person’s horses, people throwing fireworks at stores and cars, and a person lighting fireworks on a bridge, causing debris to fall on passing boats below, according to a sample of the reports that Porche shared with The News Tribune.

Porche said that officers generally get dispatched to situations where fireworks are life-threatening or pose a major concern to a person’s property. An officer might not get dispatched to a complaint of a neighbor who is shooting off fireworks outside of a permitted time window.

City of Sumner spokesperson Carmen Palmer said Sumner had a total of 10 fireworks complaints this year. Eight of those were submitted online and two were received from dispatchers. Officers responded to the two received from dispatchers.

Palmer confirmed that the online reporting system does not dispatch Sumner police, but “generates a list that goes to the department on a schedule.”

“It helps the department see any problem areas arising, but it’s not in real time and not a dispatched call out,” Palmer wrote in an email. “Next year, we need to clarify that expectation better when we offer the online option.”

Capt. Peter Johnson, who oversees the Lakewood Police Department’s patrol division and serves as the department’s liaison with South Sound 911, said that the department chose to pull a final report of complaints from FireworksReport.com at the end of the period while it was active to forward to a crime analyst.

That data can be used to find patterns, make heat maps based on the addresses people note in their complaints, and inform reports to share with the Lakewood City Council and guide next year’s patrol decisions, he said.

Johnson compared the fireworks-complaint site to their lines for traffic complaints or animal control. If your neighbor is speeding, an officer might not be able to catch that person in the act, but collecting those complaints can help officers see they need to pay attention to a certain area, he said.

The Gig Harbor Police Department and the Puyallup Police Department chose not to participate in the FireworksReport.com system.

According to Gig Harbor Chief of Police Kelly Busey, Gig Harbor police responded to all nine fireworks-related complaints it received on July 3 and July 4 through South Sound 911 dispatchers. There were no other complaints made over the period between 6 a.m. on June 28 and 6 a.m. on July 8. The notes show that several times officers showed up and either didn’t observe further fireworks or saw the fireworks stop upon arrival. Busey said in a prior interview that Gig Harbor tends to be a quieter area for fireworks.

Puyallup Police Capt. Kevin Gill said Puyallup police responded to all 29 fireworks-related complaints they received from dispatchers. He said that copies of the actual reports would require a public-disclosure request, but the concerns included “noise, debris in the roadway/sidewalks, debris on houses, the loud noises disturbing people, pets and in some cases exacerbating health disorders.”

Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated the name of the in-house system officers use, Incident Inquiry, that’s supported by South Sound 911. The article has been updated with the correct name.