Mayor Eric Adams (D-New York City) has issued a statement that advises local store owners to ban anyone from entering the store if they refuse to take off their face masks, stating that they are most likely hiding their identities from the police than try to protect from exposure to COVID.
Adams — who is responsible for allowing a masking mandate to stand throughout his city for small kids in school until close to the start of summer 2022, made no indication that he intended to try and call for the state to remove lift mandates for public transit that fell off this past September 2022 and that expired for area hospitals and health care centers as of February of 2023 — has now sounded the call for stores to set up policies to ban masking in an effort to make a facial recognition initiative that is aimed at putting a stop to rampant crime all over the city much more effective.
As part of an interview with 1010-WINS, the NYC Mayor expressed, “Do not allow people to enter the store without taking off their face mask and then once they’re inside they can continue to wear if they so desire to do so. … When you see these mask-wearing people, oftentimes it’s not about being fearful of the pandemic. It’s fearful of the police catching [them] for their deeds.”
This facial recognition plan is set up not just to combat the worsening crime rates but to help police in putting a name and face to repeat offenders and suspects that might also be connected to additional, potentially more serious, criminal activity.
Adams went on to state that his intent was not to make people feel at all unsafe, adding that after lowering their masks when they entered, shoppers that wanted to don their masks once again due to concerns centered on their health would be allowed to do so.
The mayor also spotlighted that the burden of ensuring shoppers went along with the new policy would be put squarely on the shoulders of the various business owners, expressing that additional patrol officers would be added on in areas where there were more retail stores, in part to assist with making sure patrons went along with the plans.
“We are beefing up our coverage in those BID [Business Improvement District] areas, those high shopping areas, and we’re also beefing up our surveillance and practices,” he went on. “So we have something called ‘paid detail,’ where you have uniformed officers are allowed during their off-duty hours to do some of the security at many of our stores and locations and that has always been successful.”
