In every issue of this fine rag my hack team of wannabe journalists and I tackle some of the most laughable criminal acts that have recently happened in our area. Then - if we're doing our job - we write about those crimes in a way that makes you chuckle, or at the very least provides something capable of ripping you away from Court TV ... even for just a second. Just a thought.

It's not the most important job, but someone has to do it. At the Weekly Volcano Crime Desk, along with cleaning up all the spent bottle rockets on July 5, it's our life's work.

This week's column takes us to Tacoma, where fireworks are very illegal and amazingly prevalent.

Enjoy. - Matt Driscoll

It happens like clockwork every year. Shortly after the kids are sent home for the summer, all the public schools in Tacoma set their reader boards into action: "Fireworks Are Illegal in Tacoma. No Fireworks on School Grounds." The big Metro Parks reader board near Cheney Stadium follows suit. The City-of-Tacoma-dictated message is everywhere, in fact, bandied around T-town ad nauseam prior to our country's annual Independence Day celebration - which for years included the ceremonial drinking of beers and blowing off of digits, until the powers that rule over all of us thought better of it. Progress, we'll call it.

When it comes to the attempted preservation of its citizenry's digits, Tacoma is as progressive a city as you'll find. In T-town, seemingly behind the times in so many other arenas, we can be considered ahead of the curve on matters related to unnecessary detached-garage fires and blood blisters. Fireworks don't fly in Tacoma, mister.

It's tough talk that, as far as I can tell, materializes into a night of forbidden bangs, pops and fizzes that might be slightly less than places where fireworks aren't banned. It's tough to say. But it keeps the police busy. And it keeps the concerned citizens jamming up the non-emergency line ... like somehow TPD's going to magically have the resources to send a squad car out for every dipshit with a Roman candle.

In other words, policy at its best.

According to reports on the News Tribune's Lights & Sirens blog posted by Stacy Mulick on July 5, the Tacoma Police Department - dipping heavily into the overtime - responded to more than 150 fireworks-related calls this Fourth of July, writing 26 citations and confiscating several pounds of illegal fireworks. Mulick's post notes that anyone caught lighting fireworks in Tacoma faces a $257 fine. The Trib, as has become customary, will receive a comprehensive rundown of all fireworks-related calls, tickets issued and explosives confiscated when this year's enforcement campaign is completed.

Humorously, Mulick's post also notes that one homeowner on Tacoma's Eastside was arrested on the Fourth for allegedly going after his fireworks-setting-off neighbors with a BB gun. According to the story, the homeowner was allegedly "irate" because of  "the lack of police response to his fireworks-related complaints ..." Police arrested the man on suspicion of first-degree assault. - Four-fingered Pete, Fireworks Related Crime Correspondent