Code enforcers struggle to ensure mask orders are obeyed
KEY WEST, Fla. — Rachel Kobylas longs for the days when her job as a code enforcement officer in the laid-back Florida town of Key West meant that she drove around making sure people turned off noisy power tools after 7 p.m.
She went after overgrown grass, unpermitted construction and boats illegally parked on the street. That all changed this summer, when her main challenge became convincing the tourists, bartenders, T-shirt shop sales clerks and fishermen who flock along Key West’s sweltering streets in shorts and flip-flops that they should also be wearing a mask.
And not just on their chin. “There have been some really negative interactions,” said Kobylas, 35, describing the “series of expletives” she routinely confronts, particularly on social media, when she tries to enforce the city’s mask ordinance. “We do our best to be firm but fair and respectful.”
The experience in Key West, which had made a living off providing a place to escape the world’s troubles, shows that while adopting state and local mask regulations may be politically difficult, making sure they are obeyed can be just as hard.
More than 30 states and an even larger number of cities have enacted a hodgepodge of mask ordinances and executive orders, but many municipalities are barely enforcing them.
In a summer that has seen enormous protests of people fighting excessive use of force by police, many law enforcement agencies have been hesitant to take on a politically divisive issue like masks. Code enforcement officers like Kobylas in Key West often lack law enforcement training, and many have lost their jobs to city cutbacks.
“At a time when the national narrative from the community and activists and others is that we have too much in our wheelhouse, here we go again,” said Art Acevedo, police chief in Houston, who is president of the Major Cities Chiefs Association. “Most police departments are being pragmatic. They are not ignoring it; they’re trying their very best to gain voluntary compliance rather than turn to enforcement through citation.”
In some cities, police chiefs have urged code enforcement divisions to take the lead, Acevedo said. Fire departments are also stepping in to enforce social distancing capacity regulations.
In a recent video meeting of the American Association of Code Enforcement, six of the 60 members present said they were enforcing mask orders, said Barbara Burlingame, the organization’s president.
“To be quite honest, as a code officer, I would rather it be a police officer because of the anger that some people have about the masks,” said Burlingame, who works in Norman, Okla. “And I would say almost 100 percent of code officers do not have any kind of self-defense training. They don’t have protective equipment if someone gets violent with them.”
Enforcement of social distancing measures and masks is a critical issue in Florida, which does not have a statewide mask mandate.
South Florida, which has suffered the highest case counts, has begun to enforce local mask rules. At least 140 people have been ticketed in Miami. In Miami Beach, where the penalty is $50, 12 people were cited on the first day the city began cracking down. Another dozen tickets were issued in Fort Lauderdale.
Two hundred miles south in Key West, the city decided it had to tighten the rules as the number of coronavirus cases started to soar.
“The last thing a public official wants to do is legislate common sense,” Mayor Teri Johnston said. “We’ve had brides saying, ‘I’m devastated! I booked my wedding!’
Why would you do that in the middle of a global pandemic when we’re a hot spot?”
The town is now flooded with tourists, some of whom bristle at the idea of being masked on vacation. The city has required masks outdoors since mid-July, even while riding a bicycle or walking alone down an empty street. Couples getting married can briefly take them off for photos. Singers in the bars got an exemption after they complained, but they still have to put up a shield and maintain 10 feet of distance from their audience, which is impossible at many venues.
“Ninety percent of the people are wearing their masks, just not over their nose and mouths,” said Jim Young, Key West’s director of code enforcement.
He and Kobylas let smokers and people with a beverage in their hands slide, since partaking while wearing a mask could be problematic.
Violators who had previously been warned get slapped with a $250 citation. The city has levied more than $13,000 in fines. Three people have been arrested.
Two other people who had tested positive for the coronavirus were arrested Wednesday and charged with violating a quarantine order after they were seen coming and going from their apartment without masks, despite being ordered by the Health Department to remain inside.
The city has tried to go easy on tourists — nearly 80 percent of tickets it has issued went to local residents — but it has little patience for the workers who serve them. Code enforcers issued $1,500 in fines to a single restaurant when they found most of the cooks in the kitchen without masks. A 17-year-old earning $9 an hour at an ice cream parlor was fined because a co-worker had previously been warned. An indigent man wrote a letter of complaint to a county judge, saying the mask ordinance was being used to harass the homeless, noting that one had been cited four times in a single day.
“To businesses that are really struggling to keep the doors open, $250 is not nothing,” said Amanda Velázquez, the owner of the ice cream shop where the teenager was cited. “We see tourists up and down the street all day long without masks on. I don’t think that’s fair.”