DES MOINES, Iowa — During the 2025 legislative session, lawmakers passed a new law allowing the use of fireworks at certain times during the July 4th holiday, and law enforcement says they noticed the impact, as calls for firework complaints, citations, and dispatch dropped significantly.

Police say in a 24-hour period on the fourth of July in 2024, police received 464 calls from individuals complaining about fireworks. This year, that number dropped to 132. It was still a busy time for police, as 75% of calls from over the holiday weekend were high-priority, meaning shootings, domestic disputes, crashes, and mental health related incidents that needed police attention.

Sergeant Paul Parizek with the DMPD says while the new law helped set guidelines for fireworks, and the numbers went down, It doesn’t mean neighbors were any happier.

“When you look at the raw numbers, that’s good. We see these declines in things that we want to see decline. But this might be one of those scenarios where we also need to make sure that we’re listening to the residents, because what we’re hearing is that the sentiments about fireworks are still the same,” Sgt. Parizek said. “There’s just no place for us to take enforcement action during this legal period. So, you’ve still got big camps of people that think this is great and there’s a big camp of people that think it’s not.”

In addition to less calls, police also say they saw less vandalism to Des Moines parks.

“One of the things that we’ve talked about a lot, and I know that one thing that impacted the neighborhoods so significantly after the 4th of July last year and the year before, was that we had to close those parks down so they could be repaired. We had to close the splash pads and close the playgrounds. This isn’t the case this year. So, those families and kids are still able to get out there and enjoy those amenities that are there for them,” said Sgt. Parizek.

Metro News: