"To what purpose are powers limited, and to what purpose is that limitation committed to writing,
if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained?"
-- Chief Justice John Marshall, Marbury v. Madison, 1803

Thursday, July 03, 2008

Oh, for the love of ...

Katy teen Stephen Gegenheimer had just bought $50 worth of roman candles and fireworks Monday afternoon and was headed home to set them off in his front yard when he spotted flashing lights in his rearview mirror.

An arson officer with the Houston Fire Marshal’s Office told the 17-year-old that he’d violated the law by driving through an annexed area of Houston with fireworks in his trunk.

Gegenheimer was baffled. Fireworks are illegal in the city of Houston, but legal in Harris County. He’d bought his fireworks legally at a stand in unincorporated Harris County and was planning to take them to his house in Katy, a few miles away, where he could legally use them.

But Gegenheimer’s direct route from the Wal-Mart in the 1300 block of Fry Road to his house in the 20600 block of Morning Creek Drive passed through a small stretch of Fry Road that has been annexed by the city of Houston, so the officer ticketed him.

“It’s ridiculous,” said Gegenheimer. “I feel I haven’t done anything wrong, but here I am with a $500 to $2,000 fine.”

As Americans prepare to celebrate the nation’s independence this weekend, Gegenheimer’s tale highlights the sometimes confusing laws surrounding the sale, use and transport of fireworks in the Houston area.

City officials have issued more than 1,200 fireworks-related criminal citations since 1997, according to a Municipal Court database of alleged violations obtained by the Houston Chronicle.

“We’re just enraged because we feel it’s as close to entrapment as you can get,” said Gegenheimer’s mother, Missy. “He’s a good kid. He’s never had a violation or a citation in his life and he was just trying to have fun on the Fourth of July.”

As you can probably guess, I’m not terribly fond of fireworks restrictions except in the case of fire danger.  I was in Bozeman one Fourth of July and it was like the city was being bombed.  People were setting off county fair level fireworks in their back yard.  Yet somehow, no one died.

But that’s neither here nor there. This is, plain and simple, a money grab by the Houston cops.  Twelve hundred tickets at $500-2000 a pop is about a million dollars funneled form unincorporated suburbs into the coffers of Houston. They are not increasing the safety of Houstonites one iota.  They’re just taking people’s money.