Depew, New York Employee Attacked After Enforcing Mask Mandate

On Friday morning, New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced a new statewide mask mandate, that will begin Monday, December 13th and go until January 15th. It's for all indoor places and will be re-examined at that date.

This follows in Erie County's footsteps, as Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz issued a countywide mask mandate the Tuesday before Thanksgiving (November 23rd).

Unfortunately, there have been incidents with customers who don't comply with mask mandates in Depew, and led to one employee reportedly getting attacked over trying to enforce the Erie County mask mandate.

According to J.M. Lesinski, reporting for NewsBreak, an AMVETS employee at their Depew location was recently attacked by a customer after trying to enforce the mask mandate. The altercation took place last Saturday, December 4th.

According to the report, the man was unruly from the start based on witnesses at the store, and the customer allegedly leapt at the female employee and pinned her down.

Employees at the AMVETS also have received verbal abuse from customers during their Black Friday Sale shopping day.

Everyone has their stance on the mask mandate, but physical and verbal abuse of employees at any establishment is appalling and should not be tolerated. My fiancee and I were at the Walden Galleria the week after Thanksgiving and a store employee had a hard time with a customer who didn't have a mask on, but was ignoring pleas from the store worker to wear one.

These employees are just trying to enforce rules they did not set in place, so berating them is not the course of action to take.