New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) has advised local stores to prohibit entry to shoppers who refuse to remove their masks, arguing that these individuals are more likely to be using the masks to hide from police rather than from exposure to illness.
Shoplifting in #NYC is so easy, this thief has time to pick the right size sneakers because he knows no one is going to do anything about it. pic.twitter.com/THf6R5sLPz
— The Daily Sneed™🕗 (@Tr00peRR) February 9, 2023
New York Police Department Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey made a similar request just a few days earlier.
“We’re seeing far too often where people are coming up to our businesses, sometimes with masks, sometimes masks, hoods, and latex gloves, and they’re being allowed, they’re being buzzed in and allowed to enter the store and we have a robbery,” the NYPD chief explained.
“We are asking the businesses to make this a condition of entry, that people when they come in, they show their face, they should identify themselves,” Maddrey added.
Now NYPD wants businesses to have their customers show their faces! Remember the "No Mask, No Entry" and how many people were even arrested and denied service over the masks! What a complete joke! Some of us were saying this back in 2020 that these masks were nothing but trouble!
— Jo Rose (@jospeakstruth_) March 1, 2023
Now, despite the fact that he was a proponent of the mask mandates and other authoritarian pandemic restrictions, Adams is speaking out against masks because of the skyrocketing crime under his leadership.
The Daily Wire notes: “Adams — who allowed mask mandates to persist in his city for small children in schools until the summer of 2022, and made no move to push for the state to lift mandates for public transit that lapsed in September of 2022 and that expired for hospitals and health care centers in February of 2023 — has now called for stores to implement no-mask policies in an effort to boost a facial recognition initiative aimed at slowing rampant crime across the city.”
In an interview with 1010-WINS, Adams warned business owners not to allow masked individuals to enter their stores.
“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,” the Democrat mayor said, adding: “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.”
A facial recognition initiative has begun in New York City — which is designed not only to combat shoplifting but to help police to identify repeat offenders and suspects who may be connected to criminal activity, especially crimes that are more serious than shoplifting.
Adams went on to assert that his comments were not intended to make anyone feel unsafe — noting that masked shoppers can just lower their mask upon entry and then put them back on if they are concerned about their health.
He also stated that the burden of ensuring that customers follow the new policy would not be placed on the business owners alone — revealing that additional patrol officers would be needed in areas with more retail stores, in part to help ensure shoppers complied.
“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,” Adams explained. “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.”
