While it’s hard to tell from the loud booms that I still hear throughout the city, many types of fireworks are illegal in D.C. and police have confiscated tens of thousands of them this year.

Since Independence Day week, police have taken 72,223 illegal fireworks off the streets, says Metropolitan Police Department spokesperson Aquita Brown. This year’s count is six times more than the 11,451 collected last year.

According to D.C. Fire and EMS, any firework that moves, explodes or shoots a projective, and emits a spark of flame great than 12 inches, among others, are prohibited in the city. Examples include firecrackers, cherry bombs, and Roman candles (which were used to attack a transgender woman in Southwest on July 6).

D.C. Police Chief Peter Newsham tweeted a photo on July 4 showing illegal fireworks that he says were being sold to children near Fort Totten. That night, just four officers confiscated 3,039 pieces, according to another tweet from the Metropolitan Police Department, which points out that the officers weren’t even assigned to the fireworks unit.

The fireworks obtained and destroyed this year “were generally from answering calls for service, proactively patrolling, and inspecting users’ fireworks,” according to Brown.

The bulk of them, as many as 51,000, were confiscated from in MPD’s sixth district, which covers several Ward 7 neighborhoods, Brown says. The next closest area in numbers was the fifth district, which includes neighborhoods like Brookland, where police seized 9,021 illegal fireworks.

Police didn’t confiscate any in the second district, which covers neighborhoods such as Georgetown, Chevy Chase, and Palisades.

You can see the breakdown by police district on this NBC4 map.

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