North Carolina Sheriff Reverses Course On Mask Enforcement
Four months after stating his deputies wouldn't enforce a statewide mask mandate, Halifax County Sheriff Wes Tripp says he will start citing businesses where workers don't have their faces covered. WRAL's Leslie Moreno reports.
(WRAL/NBC News) — Four months after stating his deputies wouldn’t enforce North Carolina’s statewide mask mandate, Halifax County Sheriff Wes Tripp now says he will start citing businesses where workers don’t have their faces covered.
Tripp says the enforcement effort comes after some businesses failed to comply with warnings issued by county health officials.
“We didn’t know what we had to start with and it scared everybody. Nobody knew, but where we are now in October I think we have pretty good understanding of what we’re doing. If I wear a mask that protects you, if you wear a mask that protects me,” Tripp said.
Business owners will now be cited if they don’t require employees to wear a mask. For restaurants like Mayflower Seafood, this is not the problem.
“I know our servers wear masks at all times especially when they’re interacting with customers,” says manager Anna Frangos, the manager at Mayflower.
The problem is that customers could face trespass charges if a business owner tells them to put on a mask or leave and they fail to do either. Frangos says this will hurt sales even more.
“If someone in the party doesn’t have a mask, then they feel like they should all go and I feel that’s going to hurt us,” Frangos says.
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