LOS ANGELES (KNX) — Members of a Los Angeles Police Department bomb squad who detonated a cache of confiscated fireworks in South L.A. last year, causing an explosion that displaced residents from their homes, ignored warnings from an expert bomb technician who advised the cache should have been separated into smaller groups, according to a report before the L.A. police commission.
The expert told federal firearms and explosives authorities that the volume of fireworks placed in the LAPD’s “total containment vessel” would result in too powerful of a blast, The Los Angeles Times reported Friday.
"Based on my experience and everything, I said, ‘Uh, this is too much to do one shot, we're gonna break them up, right?’” the unnamed technician said he told a bomb squad colleague.
The expert said his concerns were dismissed by the colleague and a supervisor.
"They basically told me that they had already done the calculations, that they were well under the net explosive weight that the TCV could handle," he told investigators.
The report will be discussed at Tuesday’s m meeting of the L.A. Police Commission. The report, compiled by LAPD Inspector General Mark Smith, faulted the department for a "lack of supervision," and said "a failure to utilize best practices at the scene of bomb squad calls had become somewhat of an accepted practice."
The June 30 explosion on East 27th Street near San Pedro Street sent 17 residents and first responders to hospitals, destroyed a bomb squad truck, and damaged 22 homes, 13 business, and 37 vehicles.
A spokesperson for the LAPD told City News Service on Saturday that the department had no comment on the report at this time.
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