Fires aside, Libby police receive zero fireworks-related calls over holiday weekend

While the Libby Police Department did not receive any fireworks-related complaints over the Independence Day holiday, officers lent a hand in a pair of pyrotechnics-related fires.

Police Chief Scott Kessel told Libby City Council on July 6 that one blaze began behind a local lodging house while the other occurred on Hamann Avenue.

In the former incident, officers recovered Roman candles and partially empty beer from the scene, he said. The latter occurred after fireworks debris was tossed haphazardly into a pickup truck.

Kessel credited the lack of fireworks-related police calls to the effort the department put into outreach ahead of time, reminding residents that pyrotechnics are banned inside city limits.

“The guys were pretty proactive,” Kessel told city councilors.

Kessel also released police response statistics for June: Department personnel responded to 216 service calls, made 22 arrests, and issued 16 citations and 17 city ordinance violations, mostly related to weeds, tall grass and junk, he said.

While arrests were up over this time last year, service calls were down. In 2020, officers responded to 254 calls, made 13 arrests, and issued 24 citations and 13 city ordinance violations. Kessel chalked the difference in calls up to the pandemic. In June of last year, people were chaffing under stay-at-home orders, he suggested.

“The big difference is in looking through the calls for service,” he said. “We had a lot of domestics, harassment, fights — people were starting to get tired of being locked inside. That’s my explanation for there being an uptick.”

June 2019 saw 260 calls for service, but 40 of those were traffic-stop related and stemmed from extra DUI patrols.

During the update, Kessel said that another member of the department had contracted and recovered from the coronavirus. At this point, half the department has come down with the virus, he said.