State uses social pressure instead of punishment
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The executive order Newsom signed March 19 requires the state’s 40 million residents to remain in their homes, except for necessary trips to the grocery store, pharmacy or doctor. Though violations are punishable by a misdemeanor, jail time and fines, Newsom has emphasized that he would rather educate Californians about the restrictions.
Newsom has said, however, that businesses that f lout the law could see their liquor licenses and other permits suspended and has called on law enforcement agencies to crack down on residents who violate the law.
California law gives state health officials, who report to the governor, and county health authorities broad powers to prevent and control communicable diseases that threaten the public.
“To the extent we have to exercise our formal authority as it relates to licensing and business revocation because people abuse it, we will,” Newsom said. “But again, I’m just incredibly blessed and pleased to live in a state where so many people get it.”
At the same time, public health experts — and Newsom — have warned that the stay-at-home order is only effective if people change their habits.
The governor has maintained that the vast majority of Californians are abiding by the new restrictions, even after back-to-back weekends of crowded beaches and packed farmers markets.
In response to the large crowds, Newsom closed all state parks to cars on Sunday. He has reiterated that local officials should enforce the stay-at-home order as needed in their communities and commended Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, who threatened to shut off water and power to businesses that remain open, for taking the right approach. Garcetti went a step further Monday and temporarily shut down all farmers markets across the city.
Police Chief Ron Lawrence of Citrus Heights, just outside of Sacramento, said many law enforcement agencies throughout the state have taken cues from the governor’s comments.
“What police chiefs don’t want is an adversarial posture. We really don’t want to take enforcement action unless we have to,” he said.
Eugene Volokh, a professor of 1st Amendment law at UCLA, said arresting people for defying the stay-at-home orders will encourage people to stay home, but he questioned the logic of placing people in crowded jails during a pandemic.
“Obviously, the government isn’t terribly interested in using resources for that, by any means,” Volokh said. “So, my guess is that, to the extent there’s any actual law enforcement here, it’s going to be very much aimed at trying to deter people through the threat of arrest rather than actually arresting people.”
Standing next to Newsom at a news conference at the Port of Los Angeles on Friday, Garcetti said the city would enforce an L.A. County order to close all beaches, public trails and trailheads to the public. The next day, law enforcement in Manhattan Beach fined a surfer $1,000 after he ignored orders to stay out of the water in defiance of the county’s beach closure.
In response to contradicting claims on social media, the Los Angeles Police Department has denied that officers have been conducting vehicle stops and putting up checkpoints to enforce the order. Officers were seen in Venice ordering people off the beach Saturday, and a helicopter was filmed ordering people to leave a skate park or be arrested for trespassing.
Garcetti said police officers visited at least one restaurant that remained open, leading to its closure, but largely agreed with Newsom that most people are complying with the order without enforcement.
He said: “99.99% of this can be done without any criminal penalty. But we’re prepared, if anybody is an outlier, because one person can be a super spreader, one person can kill someone, one person can kill themselves.”
Packed beaches in San Diego County led the city of San Diego and other municipalities to the north to also close their beaches.
“The purpose is to save lives. They are not recommendations to be followed when they are convenient,” San Diego County Sheriff Bill Gore told The Times. “If we can’t get the voluntary compliance, we’re ready to issue citations.”
Mary Ann Limbos, deputy health officer for Yolo County in Northern California, said her agency is prepared to order more aggressive enforcement if warranted, but thus far that has not been necessary.
“It’s going to take at least a couple of weeks in order for us to see any changes in the numbers of cases we are seeing,” Limbos said. “But I think it was a wake-up call the other day when we actually had a death in the county.”
In rural parts of the state, where some counties have yet to identify a positive coronavirus case, violations of the statewide order are rare but still cropping up.
Sheriff Mike Fisher of Sierra County, home to 3,000 residents, said his deputies have quickly remedied calls concerning noncompliance.
“The thing here in Sierra County is that people tend to kind of self-social-distance themselves to begin with,” Fisher said.
Since California enacted the first stay-at-home order in the nation, more than half of the states in the country have adopted their own orders, including Washington and New York, which have struggled with large numbers of coronavirus cases.
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan announced a similar stay-at-order on Monday, warning that anyone who willfully violates the order can be charged with a misdemeanor.
Newsom has warned Californians that their choices will determine whether the state’s healthcare system is overrun with sick patients.
“I completely reject this notion that somehow we are destined to any particular fate,” Newsom said last week. “It is decisions, not conditions, that determine our future. And it’s the sum total of millions of individual decisions.”
Newsom wrote in a letter to President Trump last week that the state expected more than half of all Californians to become infected with the novel coronavirus in the next eight weeks. Mark Ghaly, California’s secretary of health and human services, later said the state figure failed to reflect the effects of the stay-at-home order or social distancing policies, which could dramatically decrease the spread of the disease if followed.
A University of Washington study, which does take California’s order and other policies to slow the virus into account, suggests more than 6,109 people will die from COVID-19 in the state by Aug. 4. The state is making efforts to secure 50,000 more hospital beds for sick patients should the number of coronavirus cases surge as expected by mid-May, Ghaly said.
The governor’s office said that the “Stay Home. Save Lives” campaign includes advertisements on Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and Spotify and that businesses in California have invested more than $6.5 million to support it.
In a video the governor’s office posted on Facebook this week, Ferrell, described as a “famous millennial” who loves to go out on the town and party, advises Californians to create their own party in the comfort of their homes.
Snoop Dogg tells viewers to remain in their homes in a 30-second video that Newsom’s office promoted on Twitter. “The longer you stay outside, the longer we gonna be inside,” he says.