Fishers reader disappointed in Sheriff for refusing to enforce mask mandate

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Dear Editor:

It was with great dismay that I read Hamilton County Sheriff Quakenbush’s public, written refusal to enforce the Governor’s mask mandate because it supposedly violates people’s Constitutional freedoms.

Mr. Quakenbush seems to have missed a very important lesson about freedom. It’s always paired with responsibility.

If armed gunmen were to come into our community and start spraying bullets at innocent bystanders, I’m sure Mr. Quakenbush would leap into the fray and do whatever he could to the gunmen to keep more people from being maimed and killed.

Well, armed gunmen (asymptomatic and presymptomatic COVID-19 carriers) are in our community. And with every unmasked breath they take they are spraying bullets of contagion into every man, woman and child they meet. And of those they meet, 70 percent will sicken, 20 percent of those will suffer mightily – some scarred for life – and 2 percent of them will die.

Mr. Quakenbush was not ordered to immediately arrest every unmasked person in his jurisdiction. All he was required to do was ask them to stop “shooting” other people with their potential germs by asking them to put on a mask. And if they refused to comply, Gov. Holcomb provided guidance for the consequences that might flow from that choice.

In the Preamble to the Constitution we do indeed declare we are free to secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our children. But we also declare that we are responsible for promoting the general welfare – that is, caring for those around us. Enforcing basic public health measures, such as wearing a mask to combat a deadly respiratory virus, is therefore an integral part of upholding the Constitution.

I hope Mr. Quakenbush will rethink his position on this issue as well as his duty to the community he has been elected to serve. I hope he can make room alongside his zealous defense of the personal freedoms within the Constitution to take up with equal zeal the responsibilities that come with them. We all need to do our part because COVID-19 is a dangerous assailant that is currently armed and out of control in our Indiana communities.

UPDATE: Within just a few days of Mr. Quakenbush’s refusal to enforce the state mask mandate, Gov. Holcomb, bowing to pressure from some members of law enforcement and state legislators, dropped the criminal penalties from the mandate. Gov. Holcomb said, “The mask police will not be patrolling Hoosier streets.”

This is a failure of leadership for all the reasons described above. This failure leaves small business owners and essential workers to weather without any backup or support the verbal, and sometimes physical, assaults of those who refuse to wear a mask.

No one ever thought “mask police” would be unleashed on the state of Indiana. But in the absence of common sense exhibited by too many Hoosiers during this pandemic, Gov. Holcomb’s first instinct to issue a mask mandate complete with penalties for non-compliance was a correct and constitutional one.

I hope all who objected to enforcing this sensible public health measure will rethink their positions as this respiratory virus continues to surge in our state. I fear that if they don’t, we’ll see many of our neighbors suffer and many businesses close due to owners and staff contracting COVID-19 from their non-compliant customers.

M. Faunette Johnston

Fishers