Board of Aldermen 09-22-2020 Page 61
President Wilshire
Thank you, Chief. Anyone else?
Alderman Lopez
Yeah, | just wanted to remind everybody that we were all 16 once and | personally | worked more than my
fair share at grocery store. |am more worried about Thanksgiving rush when people are trying to get their
food and we have to have ask a 16 year old how to figure it out how to get people through, get them to
manage the line. 16-year old’s do handle interaction with adults and when they can’t then they go for
another adult. This isn’t going to create any kind of new dynamics where nowa 16-year-old girl has to
shield the door or anything like that. If anything, it just gives her a reason to contact the Police and it’s fully
understood that she’s not doing it because she is a busybody which is the popular myth that’s kind of being
perpetuated locally. She’s doing it because it’s the law and she’s trying to uphold the law and she’s just as
responsible as anyone else. | think there’s plenty of 16-year old’s that will probably out mass an adult how
every many 6 packs he’s been drinking; but they are not necessarily going to start a fight every time either.
If the manager of that store is responsible for managing that property, typically they'll put somebody in a
role that they can handle, otherwise they have to bear the consequences and | don't think this is going to
be any different.
President Wilshire
Alderman Klee?
Alderman Klee
Thank you, Madam President. | want to kind of reiterate something that the Chief has mentioned. | had
contacted him | think about a week or so ago about complaints that | was getting about a couple of different
businesses and one in particular that I'd got a number of calls for. And this particular business had said
that they don’t need them because they are doing something else within their store that will, you know,
mitigate any kind of a virus. And while | do believe that they really felt that way, that’s not what our Health
Department was saying.
When | spoke to Chief Carignan that was one of the things he asked me, “Have you guys passed this yet”
and | said, “No it’s still waiting to come to the Board” and he said the same thing that he just said here, “We
need this in order to do our jobs and work efficiently’ and so on. | don’t think they are going to get an
inordinate amount of calls, maybe they will, maybe people are going to try to challenge it. | don’t that’s
going to happen but | never say never. | think it’s important, | do understand wnat businesses feel like they
are going through but the majority of businesses that | spoke to want this. They want this strength so they
don’t have to be the bad guy, because they want to protect their employees, they want to protect
themselves and they want to protect their customers.
There are a few that just say, “nol don’t want this and | should be able to make up my own mind”. But |
think we do need to pass this and try to work out some of the glitches as they come by.
President Wilshire
Chief, you want to respond?
Police Chief Carignan
Thank you, Madam President, and sorry Alderman Clemons. | just want to state that we are not looking —
like when the original Ordinance was passed, we are not looking to run into businesses and start issuing
every business owner summonses. We get that this is a struggle for everybody, we get that it’s tough. But
when we have a business that we’ve gotten a complaint about 3, 4, 5 times, it would be nice to have some
