The Miami Police Department has appointed 39 police officers to fulfill the City’s required mask order. In the past two weeks, police masks have been giving out citations to everyone who has not worn face coverings and has also fined individuals who have worn masks but have not worn them correctly.
Residents in Miami-Dade County are expected to wear face masks in both public areas within and outside. According to a Miami Herald report released on Thursday, the Miami-Dade Police Force provided 162 citations to people arrested in violation of the county’s required mask policy.
The coronavirus mask police gave out penalties for non-compliance with the face mask order in grocery stores, barbershops, and country clubs. The fine is $100 for not wearing a mask.
The Miami Herald reported that a woman was walking from the Publix grocery store in North Miami Beach to her car on the parking lot. After leaving the shop, Johanna Gianni took off her mask and was immediately confronted by a police officer.
The cop issued her a ticket for not wearing a face mask in a public space. Gianni said the parking lot was nearly empty, and there was no one around her when she took off the mask.
The woman showed the police officer that she had a mask in her hand, but she was still given a ticket. She said the ticketing felt like a “set-up to catch shoppers after they followed the rules where it really mattered, inside the grocery.”
“I think they should make a judgment call,” Gianni said. “If you’re in the middle of a crowd and you’re walking without a mask, I get it. But if I’m walking back to my car in a semi-empty parking lot, I think you could cut me some slack.”
