The council approved an ordinance on first reading that would ban the possession and sale of mortar-type, reloadable shells and shorten the fireworks selling season by one day – going from June 27- July 5 and Dec. 25-Jan. 2 to June 28-July 5 and Dec. 26-Jan.2.

The ban came before the council in October, but it deferred making a decision because of the absence of two councilmen.

Since then the language of the ordinance has been changed slightly to clarify the fact that only single tube mortars will be banned.

The proposed ban stems from recent incidents with police officers and Councilman David Edwards.

Edwards, who was hit by mortar shrapnel over the summer, said in a previous interview the way the law is written buying mortar shells outside of town and bringing them here would be illegal, because possession of mortars is also banned along with selling the shells.

Edwards also cited recent incidents with a police officer in Columbia this summer and another involving two Murfreesboro Police Officers last summer.

The Murfreesboro incident led Police Chief Glenn Chrisman to request a ban on virtually all fireworks in May. The council decided to take a closer look at the issue at the time and declined making a decision.

Edwards said it was these incidents and not the October fire at Fireworks Supermarket that prompted the proposed ban on mortar shells.

Red-light camera update

Murfreesboro Police Chief Glenn Chrisman warned against drawing any conclusions from crash data collected by red-light cameras.

Chrisman gave the Murfreesboro City Council an update on crash data and citations issued by the system in the first three months of use.

“(This) is only a preliminary snapshot of the system,” Chrisman said, adding it could take months and even years to come up with conclusive data. “We need more time to see a difference in side-impact and unprotected left-side collisions.”

From the beginning Murfreesboro officials have said the goal of installing red-light cameras was to reduce the number of crashes at intersections.

Chrisman said the data suggests the automated red-light enforcement cameras reduced crashes by 2.13 percent overall in the first three months of service.

“It’s an effective tool in dealing with these situations,” Chrisman said, explaining it frees police resources to deal with more serious situations than traffic monitoring.

The cameras were installed at South Church Street and Middle Tennessee Boulevard, Memorial and Northfield boulevards, and South Rutherford and Mercury boulevards on June 1.

The remaining three intersections – Old Fort Parkway and West Thompson Lane, Northwest Broad Street and West Northfield Boulevard and Broad and South Church streets – went online July 5.

The intersections were chosen specifically because they have the most crashes and injuries resulting from red-light running, MPD Spokesman Kyle Evans explained when the cameras were installed.

The new information from the first three months in 2008 of service show the rate of side-angle or T-bone crashes fell by 8.87 percent over 2007 and overall crashes fell by a little more than 2 percent.

But read-end crashes saw a slight increase of 1.89 percent over the same period when compared to last year.

From July 5 through Sept. 30, 6,626 citations were issued to light runners from the cameras, resulting in more than $330,000 in fines.