Palm Springs Police Department shares update on face-covering enforcement

With the state of California under a “wear-a-mask" order, News Channel 3 spoke with the Palm Springs Police Department on how they’ve been doing when it comes to enforcing it.

“With the surge recently in the state and here locally, the city of Palm Springs took an aggressive stance of making sure that our business community and their clients were protected,” captain Mike Kovaleff of the Palm Springs Police Department told News Channel 3. He explained how they’ve stepped up their game when it comes to policing the mask orders and how they're seeing an improvement in people who are compliant.

“Since this secondary wave, we’ve noticed a lot of people already in compliance and our community has been great throughout this whole process,” captain Kovaleff said.

He said they haven't written any citations yet.

“We contacted several hundred people throughout the weekend just in the public and educated them," Kovaleff said. "We had officers driving through the downtown area providing announcements over the PA to put on masks but overall it went well," he added.

The strict mask rules also apply to Palm Springs police officers.

“When they’re alone in their patrol care, they’re not but anytime when they’ll be making contact with someone they’re wearing their masks,” he said.

Captain Kovaleff also told us it was a busy Fourth of July weekend as officers made sure businesses were enforcing the mask order as well.

“Our code enforcement was out between Friday, Saturday and Sunday. We conducted 76 compliance checks at our local businesses. All of them were found in compliance. Those that we had to make small tweaks with, they adjusted and were in compliance,” he explained.

“There’s a reason why we’re doing this and that’s to protect everybody, us, the public, our visitors, the business community. We want everybody to be safe and make it through this pandemic and go about their normal lives when this thing ends," he said.