Adams had said on Monday that people who refuse to pull down their masks when they go into a store should be barred. “We need to stop allowing them to exploit the safety of the pandemic by wearing masks, committing crimes,” he said on WPIX-TV. “Once you’re inside the store, you can put the mask on” again. He added in a separate appearance on WINS radio that store employees would know to keep an eye on shoppers who did not comply because “if someone is violating the basic rules, they may be there to violate a substantial rule as to commit a crime.”
The mayor’s call to take the masks off, if only for a moment or two on the way into a store or a deli, came at a time when crime in New York appears to be declining. In the first two months of the year, crime rates have gone down in most categories, according to data from the Police Department. Overall, crime in February dropped 5.6 percent compared with February 2022, which the department said contributed to a reduction of 0.4 percent for 2023 from 2022.
Still, some deli workers applauded the mayor for saying a mask should come off to go into a store. “People are hiding behind it,” said Abdul Moz at Health Choice, on Madison Avenue at East 117th Street. He said the store had not been robbed — “so far” — but he believed that New York had passed the point in the pandemic where masks were necessary for health reasons.
If dropping a mask makes it easier for surveillance cameras get a full-face view of customers as they walk in, the cameras are ready at the Ocean Deli, on Lexington Avenue at East 121st Street. Sultan Mohammad, who works there, said there are “like 12,” so many that a Google review said “they must have had a lot of thefts.”
They have not, Mohammad said. But he said that wearing a mask would give would-be thieves “a green light to do whatever they want to do.”
“It’s not just about regular masks,” he said. “They come in a ninja mask. That would cover their whole…
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