Seven months into the coronavirus pandemic, the message from researchers and officials has been crystal clear: Wearing a mask will slow the spread and save lives.
Signs reminding residents to flip on their face coverings speckle nearly every store window across the commonwealth, and the state has required a mask when social distancing isn’t possible in public since May.
But, as complaints flooding Boston’s BOS:311 website indicate, not everyone has been complying with the mandate.
A photo sent to the city from one person in the North End Friday apparently showed two police officers, who had gaiters bunched around their necks instead of over their faces, walking past other mask-less individuals on Hanover street.
“Why is no one monitoring this busy area more effectively?” the resident questioned.
In another complaint lodged on Friday, a resident said a large group of people were not wearing masks or following social distancing guidelines in Dorchester.
“This is why COVID is spiking,” they added. “PLEASE make the madness stop.”
But when it comes to enforcing these statewide mask mandates, many cities share the same approach: an educational alternative in place of issuing fines or citations.
Under Gov. Charlie Baker’s executive order requiring masks, the state’s Department of Public Health, local boards of health, and other authorized agents were given the power to enforce the mandate alongside local and state police. While residents could face fines up to $300 per violation of local public-health rules, many cities have sought more nuance behind the decision to issue citations.
According to the Boston Public Health Commission, officials have been concerned that enforcing fines could disproportionately affect certain communities, lead to economic disparities, and pose more financial barriers for families amid the ongoing pandemic.
Instead, the BPHC and the Boston Police Department have taken a more supportive approach by distributing thousands of masks to the city’s residents.
Officials in Cambridge have similarly avoided a traditional style of enforcement.
“Since mask-wearing became mandatory in Cambridge at the end of April, the city has aggressively promoted the practice in electronic communications to residents, including the city website, daily COVID-19 email updates, and social media,” Claude A. Jacob, the city’s chief public health officer and director of the Cambridge Public Health Department told Boston.com in a statement. “In addition, posters have been put up in parks and other places that promote wearing face coverings, physical distancing, and handwashing.”
In light of the warmer weather, the city also amended its emergency order on face coverings until Sept. 22 so residents could temporarily remove their masks when outdoors if physical distancing of at least six feet is possible.
“Infections are ticking upward in Cambridge and the state, and we encourage residents to be vigilant and take added precautions this summer,” Jacob said.
And enforcement took yet another unique form on July 20, when the city and the public health department launched the Cambridge Community Corps, a pilot program encouraging residents to wear face coverings and adopt safe practices when visiting parks and other recreational areas.
“The corps members are speaking with people in parks, tot lots, basketball courts, and other open spaces throughout Cambridge,” Jacob added.
In Somerville, city officials have written very few citations for those not wearing a mask, and in most cases, issuing fines is a last resort unless an individual is being willfully non-compliant.
Mayor Joseph Curtatone said when the pandemic first hit, city officials and police were deliberately engaging people and handing out masks to encourage not just compliance with the order, but a behavioral change to accompany the newfound need for face coverings.
“We’ve distributed tens of thousands, if not over 100,000 masks in the community,” he said, noting that residents are also able to call 311 and request that a mask be delivered to them. “We saw incredible compliance with people wearing face coverings and masks, although I admit there’s been some erosion.”
He said the warmer weather, which continues to draw more and more people out of their homes, brought about an attitude shift.
“We were successful at the beginning, we sort of spiked the football of victory and said we won something,” he said. But “we haven’t won anything.”
With compliance wearing away, Curtatone said residents have also been logging more complaints to the city about those who are not wearing masks, or businesses that are supposedly not enforcing face coverings for their workers and customers.
Once a complaint is filed he said a member of the city’s staff will follow up on it. So if someone called about a construction site or business where workers were mask-less, Curatone said the inspectional services division would make a trip to the described location.
Following up does get trickier when the complaint targets workers at a retail outlet, grocery store, or other individuals, he said.
When that’s the case, police officers or city ambassadors will be more vigilant in public, engaging joggers and residents about the value of wearing a mask, Curtatone added.
“There is a component of self compliance here and selflessness that has to come into play. And I wish we were more of a selfless society,” the mayor said. “I’m proud of our community, but as a society in general we’re not as selfless as we hold ourselves out to be. Because if we could do this one thing, along with two others — wear a mask, socially distance ourselves from one another, and wash our hands religiously — we would not only continue our efforts to flatten out the curve, we would knock down any sight of a resurgence.”
But Curtatone said right now, Somerville hardly has the resources needed at the local level to enforce masks through education, oversight, and support.
“We barely have enough resources and we still need more,” he said, “which is troubling because Somerville isn’t an affluent city, but we have enough resources to do most things we want to do. Most communities in the commonwealth don’t. Organizationally, most town governments and a lot of city governments don’t have the organizational infrastructure to do what they have to do to manage a response to the COVID crisis, including all the enforcement and oversight and education pieces, as well as operate the basic operations in the city.”
On top of lacking local resources, Curtatone said having differing mask orders in towns and cities across the Bay State creates another issue: multiple sets of rules without any alignment.
That’s why he’s been advocating for a uniform mandatory mask order across the commonwealth.
“To be effective and impactful as a region across a broad swath of the commonwealth, we can’t be acting individually with varying degrees of mandates and guidelines of protocols,” he said. “Behavior will change because we’re densely populated. Our borders are integrated with one another.”
This unified plan, he added, would need to be both bold and deliberate.
“We really need a coordinated, unified plan in the commonwealth, and not just around masks and face coverings, but testing and contact tracing,” Curtatone said. “Really, a uniform set of indicators that we’re all going to be guided by to understand how we’re going to move forward to take on the resurgence again.”
For Curtatone, it’s not a question of if there will be a second surge in coronavirus cases, but of when. And wearing a mask will be an essential tool to mitigating that next wave, he said.
“We let down our guard as a commonwealth,” Curtatone said. “We’re going to be hit hard by the resurgence and our actions everyday matter. Every action on our part individually as elected officials and as a commonwealth is going to make a difference in that.”
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