A man on Long Island has been arrested and charged with possessing a knife and wearing a face mask in public, a milestone moment in the debate over whether to criminalize masks in New York State.
The push to ban masks in some public settings began in June after some pro-Palestinian demonstrators covered their faces during protests. They said that they had done so to avoid online harassment, though some activists used the anonymity provided by their masks to harass people or to engage in acts of vandalism.
The man arrested on Sunday, Wesslin Omar Ramirez Castillo, 18, the first to face charges under a mask ban passed this month in Nassau County, N.Y., was not engaged in protest. He was walking down Spindle Road, a residential street of tidy lawns and single-family homes in Hicksville, wearing dark clothes and a ski mask in August, the county police said in a statement.
Christopher Boyle, a spokesman for the Nassau County executive, Bruce Blakeman, a Republican who championed the anti-mask law, said Mr. Castillo “was on the street corner, and somebody called in a suspicious person.”
When police officers arrived, they frisked Mr. Castillo and discovered a 14-inch knife in the waistband of his pants, the department said in a statement on Tuesday. He was charged on Monday with several crimes, including criminal possession of a weapon and a violation of the mask law. It was not immediately clear if Mr. Castillo had a lawyer.
“The cops stopped him and had the ability to do a pat down due to the mask law,” Mr. Boyle said in an email. He said Mr. Castillo was the first person to be arrested under the measure and that the case represented a “success with the new mask law.”
The law, the Mask Transparency Act, makes it a misdemeanor to wear a face covering in public for reasons other than health or religion. It was passed by the county’s Republican-controlled Legislature this month.
Masks that are not worn for health or religious reasons “are often used as a predicate to harassing, menacing or criminal behavior,” the legislators wrote in the bill. Violators could face a fine of up to $1,000, up to a year in jail, or both.
In June, a coalition of civil rights groups, including the Anti-Defamation League and the National Urban League, called for the state to ban the wearing of masks at protests. They said the masks allowed people to anonymously commit crimes and compared them to Ku Klux Klan hoods.
But others warned that such a ban could have serious unintended consequences.
Some feared the proposal was meant to crackdown on pro-Palestinian speech, and others warned it could harm efforts to combat the coronavirus, potentially endangering immunocompromised people and people with disabilities. Not long ago, the state heralded face masks as a tool against the spread of Covid.
Others warned that a mask ban could provide police officers with a pretext to stop people of color and frisk them on sidewalks, subways or other public places.
On Tuesday, Beth Haroules, a senior staff attorney at the New York Civil Liberties Union, said masks “protect people’s health and their ability to speak out” and warned that the arrest of Mr. Castillo showed that the measure was “ripe for selective enforcement by a police department with a history of aggression and discrimination.”
“Trumpeting today’s arrest to justify the county’s mask ban is silly,” Ms. Haroules added. “Reporting suggests black clothes were also involved. One wonders whether the county will soon ban those too.”
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