A week into the statewide mask mandate, and the local health department is swamped with complaints about people not wearing masks.
But officials say they still don’t have a lot of guidance to deal with the high volume of calls.
Gov. Eric Holcomb issued the statewide mask mandate on Aug. 3, as a result of Indiana’s positive COVID-19 case numbers rising last month. There are no fines or criminal penalties attached to the executive order because the goal is to educate Hoosiers on the importance of wearing masks, Holcomb said in one of his weekly press conferences. The state is expecting Hoosiers to "do the right thing" and wear a mask.
The burden of enforcing and educating the public on wearing masks was put onto local health departments with little guidance from the state, said Betsy Swearingen, director of the Johnson County Health Department.
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"It was dumped in our laps, and we have no further guidance to help us fix the situation," Swearingen said.
Not wearing a mask was originally supposed to be a criminal offense with a Class B misdemeanor attached, but local law enforcement in the county and around the state said that officers would not enforce a mask order because agencies didn’t have the manpower. So, the criminal penalty was removed before Holcomb signed the executive order. Now, all complaints of non-mask-wearers are to be directed to the local or state health departments.
The county health department was already struggling to keep track of the hundreds of calls they get each week before there was a mask requirement, Swearingen said. Now with the mandate, those calls have increased greatly.
"It’s greatly increased since the mask mandate. We have people self-policing … They’ll complain about anyone not wearing one; Just a general customer at Walmart, they’ll call us and say they walked past someone that wasn’t wearing one," Swearingen said.
These calls have added to the health department’s already full workload, and made it harder for officials to do their regular jobs. The mask mandate reports are added on top of the regular health inspections of businesses, along with extra summertime pool inspections, septic inspections and managing back to school immunizations.
"It’s hard to do your regular job while taking these calls," Swearingen said. "People not doing the right thing is costing us the ability to go out and provide services for the public like normal."
Most of the complaints are recorded into a single system, and health inspectors will follow up, if they can, she said. The problem is the department does not have the authority to submit a health code violation to fine businesses for not requiring employees to wear masks, Swearingen said. It is also impossible to track down individuals who are reported for not wearing a mask.
The best they can do is educate the public and local businesses, Swearingen said.
Health department officials will be sent to businesses with reported complaints about employees not wearing masks. The officials will educate the business owners and employees on why they should wear masks because it is a state requirement, but they cannot give out any penalties, Swearingen said.
"We encourage the owner of the facility to be educating too because they’re our first line of defense," Swearingen said.
The calls have also been coming in unorganized. Some are coming to the main health department line, by email, Swearingen’s phone or to another health inspector, she said. So, there is no single phone line where complaints come in, which makes it difficult to keep a record of the calls. Because of this, Swearingen could not come up with the exact number of calls the health department has received since the mandate began last week.
"I just say hundreds because I know I’ve gotten a lot, and I always have an inspector telling me, ‘Hey I got this call, this call, this call,’" Swearingen said.
Those who wish to file a complaint with the county health department should call the main office line, she said.
While the health department is receiving calls every day, very few people are calling 911 with mask concerns. Heath Brant, director of Johnson County 911 Center, said dispatch has only gotten a few calls relating to the mask mandate, and those calls were all from businesses reporting customers not leaving the property after refusing to wear a mask.
"That’s the only time we’ll send someone out is if there is some type of disturbance," Brant said.
The 911 center was initially expecting a lot of calls after the mandate was put in place last week, but since local law enforcement told the public that officers were not going to enforce the order, the call volumes remain low, Brant said.
The Johnson County Sheriff’s Office responded to those few calls from businesses, but the people in question who refused to leave had already left before police arrived, Sheriff Duane Burgess said.
The sheriff’s office was the first agency in the county to put out a statement saying it would not enforce the mask mandate. Before the mask mandate and before Burgess released that statement, the office had already been getting several calls about people not wearing masks, he said.
"We got calls about ‘they’re doing this,’ ‘they’re not social distancing,’ ‘they don’t have a mask on.‘ Those numbers were huge when we first started," Burgess said. "I’m not trying to throw anything on the health department, but we try to educate the folks on wearing masks; that’s the best we can do."
Burgess supports wearing masks, as he wears one himself, but he does not believe it’s the police’s job to make sure everyone is wearing one, he said.
"We educate people who come to the courthouse to put your mask on to do business here. My office staff are wearing masks, and we’re wearing masks in the jail," Burgess said.
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If you wish to file a complaint with the Johnson County Health Department about an individual or a business violating the statewide mask order call the main line at 317-346-4365
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