Seeking... seeeking
July 4, 2011 9:57 PM Subscribe
Police lasers for fireworks?
I went up on roof tonight to watch some fireworks, and to my delight a nearby neighbor happened to be setting off a whole bunch of incredibly illegal fireworks. Every once in a while, I would see lights shine out from the hills onto the smoke that was left from the fireworks. It looked like a green searching spotlight or laser beam or something that, to me, looked like it was homing in on the smoke. It would trace around, and when it found the smoke, just stay on it for a second before flickering off again. Is this some sort of police technology to try to find people letting off illegal fireworks?
I'm in Oakland, Ca, if that is relevant.
I went up on roof tonight to watch some fireworks, and to my delight a nearby neighbor happened to be setting off a whole bunch of incredibly illegal fireworks. Every once in a while, I would see lights shine out from the hills onto the smoke that was left from the fireworks. It looked like a green searching spotlight or laser beam or something that, to me, looked like it was homing in on the smoke. It would trace around, and when it found the smoke, just stay on it for a second before flickering off again. Is this some sort of police technology to try to find people letting off illegal fireworks?
I'm in Oakland, Ca, if that is relevant.
Best answer: Yeah, the smoke makes the laser beam visible, thus cooler. Not many opportunities for that. At least they're not shining them at the cockpits of commercial airliners.
I can't imagine any jurisdiction larger than Mayberry where the cops have the time on the Fourth to actively search out illegal fireworks. I know in my relatively small city it would be a Herculean effort. When I've called in past years about empty shells landing in our yard or on our (somewhat firetrappy) buildings, there hasn't been a response for 30 to 60 minutes and then they only take a report.
posted by dhartung at 10:14 PM on July 4, 2011
I can't imagine any jurisdiction larger than Mayberry where the cops have the time on the Fourth to actively search out illegal fireworks. I know in my relatively small city it would be a Herculean effort. When I've called in past years about empty shells landing in our yard or on our (somewhat firetrappy) buildings, there hasn't been a response for 30 to 60 minutes and then they only take a report.
posted by dhartung at 10:14 PM on July 4, 2011
Response by poster: aww... I suppose that all makes sense, I just let the technonerd in me get excited about firework seeking lasers from the Oakland hills. Oh well, thanks everyone!
posted by OrangeDrink at 10:34 PM on July 4, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by OrangeDrink at 10:34 PM on July 4, 2011 [1 favorite]
Australians who are tempted to go looking for smoke to shine lasers at should know that you can get busted bigtime for doing that.
posted by flabdablet at 11:48 PM on July 4, 2011
posted by flabdablet at 11:48 PM on July 4, 2011
I'm pretty sure OPD doesn't have any time for anything related to lasers that aren't pointed at airplanes.
posted by ericales at 6:08 AM on July 5, 2011
posted by ericales at 6:08 AM on July 5, 2011
HAHAHAHAHAH!!! MeFi's own peeedro once found me in a 4th of July crowd by following the lasers. Yeah, it's just fun in the smoke and stuff.
posted by MrMoonPie at 6:47 AM on July 5, 2011
posted by MrMoonPie at 6:47 AM on July 5, 2011
This thread is closed to new comments.
Just driving around is going to be a far more effective method of finding the origin of an illegal firework than some highly complex trigonometry-based-on-smoke situation.
posted by rockindata at 10:06 PM on July 4, 2011