New York City Mayor Eric Adams suggested that stores should require patrons to remove their masks before entering a store to prevent robberies or crimes.
"We are putting out a clear call to all of our shops: Do not allow people to enter the store without taking off their face mask," Adams said in an interview with radio station 1010 WINS. "Once they're inside, they can continue to wear it if they so desire to do so."
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Tackling crime was the focal point of Adams's campaign in 2021, and he spent the first nine months of his career taking a tough-on-crime approach that drew criticism from criminal justice activists and liberal lawmakers worried about reverting to old policing policies.
The city has seen a reduction in most crime categories within the first two months of 2023, following a similar trend across major cities. Violent crimes in 2022 went down, while robberies, carjackings, and property crimes spiked to surpass pre-pandemic levels and continue to increase steadily into 2023.
In many cities, including New York City, theft and shoplifting are proving to be harder problems to address. Robberies fell only 2% in the first months of 2023, per city data. On Friday night, a 67-year-old deli employee was shot and killed in Manhattan by a robber wearing a dark face mask and a full-body Tyvek suit, per the New York Times.
In a news appearance on Monday, Adams emphasized that people can no longer use fear of the pandemic as an excuse to wear masks concealing their identities.
“Let’s be clear: Some of these characters going into stores that are wearing their mask — they’re not doing it because they’re afraid of the pandemic. They’re doing it because they’re afraid of the police,” Adams said. “We need to stop allowing them to exploit the safety of the pandemic by wearing masks, committing crimes.”
Requiring shoppers to lower their masks would give security cameras a view of their faces, Adams said. If they refused to comply, it would give store employees an idea of whom to monitor closely because “if someone is violating the basic rules, they may be there to violate a substantial rule as to commit a crime,” he said.
“That’s all we are trying to do — empower the store owners, the storekeepers, so they can play a role that we are going to do as police officers,” the mayor added.
NYPD Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey echoed Adams's statements during a Monday news conference.
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"As a sign of a peace offering, a sign of safety to those store workers, when we walk in, we should take down our mask," Maddrey said, calling it "a commonsense approach."
The policy suggestion has risen some concerns over how this will affect the health and safety of customers. On Monday, the city reported a daily average of 611 new COVID-19 cases and 24 new hospitalizations for the past week. New York City health officials still "strongly recommend everyone to wear masks in all indoor public settings."