![]() ![]() The operation required the closure of multiple streets, tangling rush-hour traffic. Spring Street in 2004, for example, they evacuated 250 people from the surrounding blocks. After discovering seven tons of fireworks in a warehouse near 800 N. The department has made a point of taking such steps before. Image: LAPDīut if LAPD had promptly acknowledged the massive size of the cache found at 26-year-old Arturo Ceja III’s residence, then they likely would have had to explain how and why they did not take greater precautions to protect the community. ![]() The visible boxes have weights ranging between 13 and 29 kilos (or 29 to 64lbs/each), meaning even a low-ball estimate should have put the weight around at least 20,000 pounds. By 10 a.m., LAPD had estimated there to be ~500 boxes of commercial grade fireworks stacked in Arturo Ceja’s back yard. Meaning that LAPD should have been acutely aware of the difference between a 5,000-pound stockpile and one more than six times that size. In 2019, they had netted a much smaller amount – just 2,350 pounds. A July 2020 press release put LAPD’s seizures for the first six months of that year at just 4,350 pounds total the final total for the year was around 8,000. Within the city of L.A., the stockpiles collected by LAPD have been much smaller. ![]() In fact, a cache of that size would exceed the total amount of fireworks confiscated across the entire county annually, which has hovered around 30,000 pounds in recent years. The cache, originally estimated by LAPD to be 3,000 pounds, then over 5,000 pounds, then, several days later, a shocking 32,000 pounds (as calculated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF)), would likely constitute the largest such stockpile taken from a private residence in this city’s history. _ Whither the urgency?Īt the top of the list of puzzling details is LAPD’s apparent underestimation of the size of its fireworks haul by 27,000 pounds. Though rich in history, culture, and community, Historic South Central is also one of L.A.’s lowest-income neighborhoods and one of the most overcrowded in the country. Google maps screen shot of the blast site and Historic South Central neighborhood. On the contrary, exploring LAPD’s use of the neighborhood as a backdrop allows for questions to be raised about how the eagerness to make this event a spectacle opened the door to such spectacular negligence.īecause if, as Chief Michel Moore stated during the July 19 briefing, LAPD was convinced the explosive materials found posed imminent danger, “not just to those bomb techs but to the citizenry and community,” then very little of what transpired over the course of that day makes any sense. The question is not meant to diminish the significance of LAPD’s bombshell admission that human error led to the detonation of materials with a net explosive weight (NEW) of approximately 42 pounds in a vessel rated to hold just fifteen. Why did LAPD make the decision to detonate explosive material on a residential street in Historic South Central – a formerly redlined lower-income Black and brown community that is also one of the most overcrowded neighborhoods in the country – in the first place? 27th Street, a slew of questions remain about the June 30 blast that traumatized and temporarily displaced at least 75 people, injured at least 17, shattered windows, shuttered businesses, and destroyed vehicles up and down the street, and contributed to the deaths of elders Auzie Houchins and Ramón Reyes. As the dust from the Los Angeles Police Department’s catastrophic fireworks detonation continues to settle on the red-tagged homes along E. ![]()
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