Is Only One Wyo’ Police Dept’ Enforcing The Mask Mandate?

Recently a couple of Jackson Hole city counsel members grew a little sick and tired of confronting people in their town who were not wearing masks. City transit drivers and store owners see maskless people all the time.

Those city counsel members held a meeting to find a way to get the local police to finally enforce their mask mandate.

The Jackson Police Chief said that there were only two circumstances that could potentially lead to citations. Usually it is if someone is not wearing a mask in a store, is asked to put one on, refuses, then refuses to leave. They will get a mask ticket along with their trespassing ticket. But that scenario almost never happens. All the Jackson police can, and have been doing, is asking people to please put one on.

“A lot has been done, but I think it’s pretty clear that more needs to be done here,” Mayor Pete Muldoon said. “I do think it’s our responsibility to make those kinds of policy decisions. We are not getting the compliance that these public health orders deserve.” (Jackson Hole News & Guide).

Merely by saying that they will try to do better at enforcement the Jackson Hole Police Department is different from other departments in most of the state of Wyoming.

The state of Wyoming has gone from 12 counties with mask mandates to a state wide mask mandate, yet all along the way county district attorneys along with county and city police have refused the enforce the mandate, siting lack of time, recourses, and constitution questions.

In Campbell County Wyoming County Commissioners held a public meeting to discuss the state mandate. "We are very concerned and we will not comply. We will not comply with having the government tell us in a free nation in a free world what we're going to do in our lives," said Campbell County Republican Party Chair Vicki Kissak, speaing as a private citizen.

Sweetwater and Freemont County Sheriffs are among many in law enforcement across the state who have also come out against enforcing a state wide mandate. They had also spoken out against enforcing their local county mandates.

This causes me to wonder why we have been told that these "mask mandates" are being extended into next year. If there is no enforcement then where is the mandate? How can a mandate that does not really exist be extended?