The Fresno Police Department says their gunshot detection system, known as ShotSpotter, recorded thousands of incidents of illegal fireworks being set off on the Fourth of July.
Mark Hudson with the FPD says shot spotter microphones, which are placed mainly in central Fresno, record all explosions but are able to distinguish between what is a firework and what is a gunshot.
“They actually filter out the illegal fireworks that are received through the detection center. But they did have a high volume number of calls. They had over 6,000 in our area that they filtered out down to 9 actual multiple gun shots that we responded to in a 24 hour period,” Hudson says.
Hudson says the 9 gunshot is still an unusually high number of daily shots recorded.
One of those shootings resulted in a victim being injured.
There were so many fireworks being set off last night that the Fresno Fire Department had to temporarily suspend responses to medical calls in order to respond to structure and vegetation fires.
FM 89's Ezra David Romero contributed to this report.
