New York City Mayor Eric Adams is asking store owners to require customers to remove their masks before entering stores as a means of preventing shoplifting and looting.
“We are making a clear appeal to all our stores: do not allow people to enter the store without removing their mask. And then once they’re in, they can continue to wear it if they want to,” Adams She said Monday during an interview with radio station 1010 WINS.
The plan was introduced as a way to deal with a increase in shoplifting in New York bodegas, grocery stores, and some luxury stores. Adams said people often wear masks not because they are afraid of the COVID-19 pandemic, but rather because they fear the police “would catch them for their actions.”
The move directly counters COVID-19 safety protocols that encourage people to wear masks in closed public spaces. Many people criticized the decision and Adams’ comments, pointing out that requiring customers to remove their masks upon entry will put disabled and immunocompromised people at risk of contracting COVID-19.
“EThis “you can put your mask back on later” doesn’t save politics. It is still illegal discrimination against people with disabilities to require exposure to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes covid, as a condition to enter a public shop,” said one. Tweets by Matthew Cortland, a senior fellow at the progressive think tank Data for Progress, which specializes in disability and health care issues.
Others questioned Adams’ implication that mask wearers are potential shoplifters, adding that the decision to have stores require customers to remove their masks upon entry will not prevent theft and robbery.
“The New York mayor’s claim that masks encourage crime and make the city less safe is baseless. The truth is the opposite: by slowing the spread of COVID-19, masks are keeping our communities safe,” said Lucky Tran, a public health and communications expert, in a Tweets.
Adams’ office did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment on the recent criticism.
The decision comes nearly a month after Adams raised the mask requirement in medical environments, which prompted a similar outcry from disabled and immunocompromised New Yorkers. Despite the high standard community transmission rate of the virus across the country, President Joe Biden declared earlier this year, the nation’s COVID-19 public health emergency designation will expire in May.
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