That sheriff is saying that, in these times of embiggened hostility towards police, his officers need to see faces of everyone they encounter so they can identify them.
And shoot them, if the situation calls for it? (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)
To me it sounded like you were saying it only made the job harder for law enforcement officers and not for everyone else who is wearing a mask, too.
I’m hard of hearing, so trying to understand someone who’s wearing a mask, even if they’re not mumbling, but especially if they are, really messes me up. Even my super expensive Jesus-level hearing aids can’t fix the problem. So, yeah, masks suck large duck eggs and I HATE wearing them.
Huh??? The sheriff is banning his officers and people entering the sheriff’s department from wearing masks. He’s not banning everyone from wearing masks. Officers are just as likely to encounter people wearing masks as they were before sheriff’s edict.
What the sheriff wrote:
Cite:
ETA: BTW, there’s a separate thread on this subject:
I can understand a store owner worrying about getting robbed and wanting to ban masks (and already heard of one in a bad neighborhood that did just that**). But I’m not sure why they’re not allowing deputies to wear them on duty. To me, the Sheriff is arguing that someone might get a uniform, badge, gun and everything else to impersonate a deputy and then wear a mask so no one will know they’re know the person is an imposter and then…I don’t know. How often to people impersonating officers try to do it at the actual station.
Besides, I think after 4 months we all know that we recognize people just fine with a mask on.
The other thing that bugs me, is that the (republican) sheriff is very clearly violating the constitutional right to freedom of expression. And, not in a ‘twitter banned me’ way, I mean it’s an agent of the local government telling you that you can wear a specific item in public/government property. If the ACLU isn’t already involved, I’m sure they will be soon.
**And even then, my suggestion was that you could take it off, walk in and put it back on. It gives clerks a second to see your face and the camera can get a decent image.
I’m on the verge of giving up. Three Covidiot stories from today, all involving well-educated people:
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Friend posts happy wedding photos from her son’s wedding. This is in an area with relatively low COVID cases, but the number is climbing, and public health officials have been begging people to mask up.
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Friend in Florida posts a photo on social media of herself and 12 other friends going out to celebrate. They’re crammed in on benches at a table, and nobody is wearing masks.
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A friend posts, “COVID, shmovid”! and shares photos of herself and a friend with arms around each other’s shoulders, no masks, no social distancing.
I hear ya. That makes me nuts!
There’s this widespread belief that as long as you’re mostly wearing a mask and social distancing, that’s good enough. The person who was hiking assured me she was being VERY cautious, yet not only is she not social distancing when she’s hiking, she’s also visiting a mutual friend, and they’re not social distancing or wearing masks. And the mutual friend ALSO claims she’s being very cautious, but she has all kinds of people coming over, and none of them social distance or wear masks.
I’m going to be on frickin’ lockdown forever if this keeps up. 
I’m torn. Part of me wants people like that (and everyone else) to be okay, but part of me wants them to get Darwin awards.
Maybe you’ve made some typos here or some key words are missing. Or maybe you’ve misunderstood something.
Yes, the Sheriff is a grandstanding Trump-licking idiot. No debate there.
But his ban has 2 parts:
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Deputies may not wear masks while at work. Dumb to the max & IMO criminally negligent.
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Ordinary citizens walking into the lobby of a police station may not wear a mask. That’s so they can be clearly identified / videoed. With the knowledge that police lobbies are typically armored and a solid thick glass partition without air holes separates the workers from the public, so no COVID transmission is possible across that barrier.
Number 2 makes sense on a balance of benefits basis. For a police station. It would not make sense for, and does not apply to, the lobby of a hotel or a restaurant or even a bank.
Number 1 is just a Trumpist jerk trying to get his department sued. And trying to neuter any effort by his county government executive or health authorities to encourage mask wearing among the public at large. A Covidiot indeed.
Encountered some Americans on Facebook yesterday criticizing South Korea for having 279 new infections in one day. I had to remind them that the USA is currently gaining that many new infections every eight minutes.
I guess number 2 makes some sense if the only concern is protecting staffers, though I don’t know of another police/sheriff’s department that sees that as an issue. And in police stations I’ve been in, the lobby tends to have quite a few people milling around. Not allowing civilians to protect themselves while waiting is a grave mistake.
We went to a casino the other week to see how they were running it. Masks were mandatory but everyone who came in had to stop at a designated spot and demask for a second while staring at a camera. Seemed like a reasonable compromise.
On Friday, the Marion County sheriff went with that approach; visitors have to remove the mask for the security camera but can then put them back on.
Listen, komrade. It’s talk like this that ruined our great nation.
Besides, books are for burning. The smoke kills the COVID.
《~~~~~ Dodges lightning bolt.
I just saw photos from a bridal shower a relative attended: everyone mask-less, sitting close together, and posing cheek-to-cheek. I just don’t get it. Do most people think they’re immune 24/7 as long as they wear a mask for trips to the grocery store?
I’ll be darned; the guy can learn. I wonder who leaned on him?
It’s been my experience many think family doesn’t count.
Doesn’t matter if someone in that family just got back from a weeks vacation in a non-masking state, staying at a large waterpark, taking group sightseeing tours, and doesn’t really believe in the “Rona Hype”. We’re family and it should be fine.
As I’ve discussed elsewhere on the board, mask compliance (corporate policy!) differs where I work based on location, with people in the office area at roughly 95% compliance and people in the warehouse at around 20% compliance. The Covidiot part of this is that the immediate coworkers of the first positive case where I work still refuse (or “forget”) to wear masks. The company even went so far as to distribute plastic face shields to the maskless ones, which I typically see sitting on their desks when I have to visit that area of the building.
I see a lot of this too. Even setting aside any anti-mask rebellion.
It’s a funny back-take on stranger danger. People who will carefully wear a mask for their own & everyone else’s protection at the grocery store won’t do it in the car with their sister who lives across town who they see once a month.