With New Year cel­e­bra­tions just days away, po­lice are urg­ing the pub­lic to be re­spon­si­ble in their be­hav­iour on Old Year’s Night by not fir­ing guns at the stroke of mid­night.

The warn­ing came from the head of the North Cen­tral Di­vi­sion Snr Supt Richard Smith who said the trend of peo­ple fir­ing gun­shots in the air in­stead of fire­works has been ob­served in re­cent times.

He said such be­hav­iour could en­dan­ger life and warned of se­ri­ous penal­ties for both li­censed and un­li­censed gun own­ers.

“The peo­ple who have il­le­gal guns, they will be charged with the pos­ses­sion of a firearm, the pos­ses­sion of am­mu­ni­tion and the pos­ses­sion of a firearm and am­mu­ni­tion to en­dan­ger life as well.

“We are look­ing at per­sons who have Firearms Users Li­cens­es (FULs), if they dis­charge their firearm in a way that en­dan­gers peo­ple’s lives as well they could be charged for that al­so and that car­ries a penal­ty of 15 years’, pos­ses­sion of a firearm and am­mu­ni­tion to en­dan­ger life.

“So they can check out the Firearms Act Chap­ter 16:01 Sec­tion 12 to see what they are deal­ing with if they want to be crazy and fire off their firearms,” ad­vised Smith.

The se­nior of­fi­cer added that the po­lice would main­tain a vis­i­ble pres­ence across the North Cen­tral Di­vi­sion to clamp down on law­less­ness for Old Year’s and the New Year.

He said po­lice of­fi­cers from var­i­ous units in­clud­ing of­fi­cers as­signed as clerks would be out on the field to pro­vide added sup­port.

Even with this en­hanced pres­ence through pa­trols and road­blocks, Smith said the pub­lic should act re­spon­si­bly and avoid drink­ing and dri­ving.

“Peo­ple tend to go over­board and drink a lot of al­co­hol and get them­selves in prob­lems. The risk is they can kill in­no­cent peo­ple tra­vers­ing the road­way.

“If you’re drink­ing, have a des­ig­nat­ed dri­ver be­cause we will be out there, we will have our breath techs on stand­by, they will be on op­er­a­tions. The mo­bile unit will be mov­ing with us,” he said.

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia’s ques­tions via What­sApp through the TTPS Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Unit ACP in charge of the Crim­i­nal Di­vi­sion Ve­na But­ler said di­vi­sion­al com­man­ders and se­nior of­fi­cers in­tro­duced an­ti-crime plans to specif­i­cal­ly suit dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties.

But­ler said she was con­fi­dent the plan would max­imise cov­er­age and ef­fi­cien­cies of the po­lice but al­so re­mind­ed the pub­lic to cel­e­brate re­spon­si­bly.

“All arms of lo­cal law en­force­ment are on board and work­ing col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly to achieve the goal. We ac­knowl­edge that it’s a cel­e­bra­to­ry time clos­ing out 2023 and ring­ing in the New Year and we want to urge cit­i­zens to cel­e­brate re­spon­si­bly.

“Do not let your cel­e­bra­tion cause your neigh­bour(s) dis­tress. In keep­ing with the spir­it of the sea­son, cit­i­zens are re­mind­ed to be con­sid­er­ate and com­pas­sion­ate,” said But­ler.

Not­ing that fam­i­lies of­ten vis­it beach­es and rivers for the New Year, But­ler said these ar­eas would al­so be close­ly mon­i­tored by po­lice.