ST. LOUIS — New Year's Eve is quickly approaching, and that's why Lane Forman is on the move in the Tower Grove East neighborhood in south St. Louis.
"We want people to live safely within Tower Grove East and all of St. Louis," Lane Forman said.
For the past three years, he and fellow members of the Tower Grove East Neighborhood Association have pounded the pavement, going to homes and businesses and leaving lots of flyers on door knobs.
The flyers asked revelers to "don't shoot" when they ring in the new year.
"I've had people tell me, 'We're wasting our time. You know it's a St. Louis tradition and you should expect random gunfire.' It's time to start a new tradition," Forman said.
Every year, police are busy responding to hundreds of illegal, celebratory gunfire calls.
"We don't need random gunfire. You know we just don't. It damages property, can kill a pet and of course, kill a person," Forman said.
"Those bullets go up and they have to come down somewhere. Sometimes our fur babies are also really stressed out, so we would like to stress for people to not use celebratory gunfire this New Year's Eve," St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones said.
The group passed out about 3,000 of the flyers.
They're just hoping their pleas for a safe New Year's Eve in the city don't fall on deaf ears.
"We've seen statistics in previous years that we had a dramatic drop in 911 calls. It does make a difference," Chris Naffziger, president of Tower Grove East Neighborhood Association, said.