On June 19, 2020, Maricopa County, which includes the Phoenix metropolitan area, had announced mask regulations approved by the Board of Supervisors. One of the regulations reads, “All riders and operators on public transportation must wear a mask.”[3] This bore directly on the light rail and buses, which Metro Valley, the transportation authority, either ran directly or through subcontracted operating companies and Allied Security. With enforcement of the new regulation being “the responsibility of law enforcement,”[4] Metro Valley announced that it would not use its employees and subcontracted security guards to enforce the regulation. In allowing passengers to board the buses and light rail without wearing masks, Metro Valley was actually breaking the law even during the “second wave” of the virus in June, 2020. In fact, it was not uncommon to see bus drivers and security guards either not wearing masks or wearing them around their chins rather than on their mouths and noses. It was especially common to see the riders wear masks covering only the chin.
Metro Valley’s excuse for not enforcing the “requirement,” which meant allowing passengers (and employees) to be on mass transit without wearing masks even though the regulation forbid it, was that some passengers (and employees) could not wear masks due to medical conditions like asthma. Allowing this exception to break the rule overall bespoke ignorance, stinginess, and laziness. Because at risk riders could have been accommodated with the modest requirement of having their respective physicians fill out a medical form that in turn would be necessary to obtain a special medical transit ID. Medical IDs were already issued to the disabled who had a medical provider fill out Metro Valley’s medical form. The transit authority did not have to emasculate the regulation and thus the public health on account of an exception. Talking to Metro Valley supervisors, I was struck by the near obsession on the exception to the extent that I could detect no awareness of making a requirement anything but, and in so doing, violating the regulation. Small minds should not rule large companies, for the consequent harm to the public can be large.
I was thrice flabbergasted when I listened on my phone to Metro Valley customer-service employees insist that masks were required on buses and light rail and that passengers could ride without masks was not incompatible with the requirement! Declarations by ignorance that cannot be wrong have a bad odor. Such ignorance has no legitimate basis in standing on stilts above customers (or anyone). When I pointed out the obvious point that allowing maskless riders on buses and trains means that masks are not required, the standard reply was actually corrective. “Masks are required. Riders will not be turned away for not wearing masks.” How can a mind possibly hold those two thoughts together as if they were consistent? Perhaps willful ignorance enjoys being corrective because of the little bit of power that can be enjoyed—so starved for the pleasure from power is the weak bird of prey, according to Friedrich Nietzsche.
Unfortunately, neither the county sheriff’s office nor the Phoenix police (nor that of at least one suburb) felt the need to enforce the county and various city laws on masks. “You need to call Metro Valley on that,” I was told as I sought comment. Even if Metro Valley had a policy of enforcing rather than breaking the regulation (and city laws) mandating masks on public transit, it was still the responsibility of law enforcement (i.e., not a transit company) to see that the regulation (and laws) are enforced. For law-enforcement agencies of municipal governments to rely on company policies conflates governmental law with organizational policies. The lack of accountability was staggering even as the coronavirus remained as a viable threat to the public health.
The political and educational cultures in Arizona were such that efforts to enforce the regulation and correct Metro Valley’s pathetic policy were especially important. On October 17, 2020 in a conference room at a resort at Scottsdale, a suburb of Phoenix, two presenters with QAnon “went on a long diatribe against people who wear masks to prevent the spread [of coronavirus]. It’s a way to control people, and a symbol of submission, they argued.”[5] It bears stating that in 2019, Arizona had ranked 49th out of the 50 American states on education prior to college. Unfortunately, a culture of ignorance can easily support and spread the message of QAnon in Arizona—“inventing an imaginary threat and ignoring the very real virus” in spite of all those people who had already died from the pathogen. Such a culture can also enable a vacuous “requirement” to be perpetuated as if it were really a requirement rather than an instance of reason turned against itself with impunity. In such a culture, a significant number of riders and employees, including bus drivers, can be expected to skirt their company’s policy on mask-wearing because it is a fraud anyway. Such employees need only have told their respective supervisors that a medical condition prevents the wearing of a surgical mask without any written documentation to support the validity of the claim. In such a culture, bus drivers would rather bar riders from sitting in the front half of the buses, meaning that the riders might not be able to keep apart spatially as per governmental and even Metro Valley’s own guidelines, than bother to wear masks while driving. Why could such drivers be required to wear plastic face guards if a legitimate medical reason exists for not wearing a surgical mask? Besides the culture of ignorance, one of a lack of regard for the public health (i.e., other people) is also part of the sordid culture that has been so ensconced in Arizona.
Perhaps the overriding
question is how such a badly managed mass transit company (including its
subcontractors that operate the buses) could continue in such a condition of
ineptitude. In 2019, I had shot lots of videos of aggressive bus drivers, bad
driving (e.g., stomping on the brake pedal at the last minute), and excess
security on some trains (hence with none in others). The city of Tempe’s
Transportation director invited me to attend a meeting with Tempe’s transit
director, representatives from Metro Valley and the director of one of the
bus-operating subcontractor companies (First Trans) in the room. Reflecting the
local culture, the director dismissed all of my videos because one of them
shows speeding of only six miles-per-hour above
the speed-limit. To my utter astonishment, the other people in the room let
him get away with the illogical effort to invalidate all of the videos—even those showing aggressive bus drivers
shouting at passengers (the drivers generally viewed their ridership as lower
class than themselves, which would have to be pretty low). Tempe’s
representative lied to the director, “The city of Tempe has no problem with the
driving,” after only months earlier having told me that speeding is a real
problem (to which I added hard braking). Perhaps bribes helped reinforce the
pathetic inter-organizational culture there.
Also up for grabs is why the
local law enforcement would decide not to enforce a law so relevant to the
public’s safety/health, and let the mass transit company (and its contractors)
violate the law by allowing passengers to ride without wearing masks. It seems
that in Arizona, the local law enforcement agencies have too much discretion
over which laws they will enforce. Anyone calling in a noise complaint there
knows this to be true.
Ironically, and reflective of the bipolar culture, residents
in poor and middle-class areas have had to endure police departments' excess reliance on
low-flying police helicopters, which have routinely interloped beyond their respective
jurisdictions (such as a city helicopter flying over county land), flown outside of designated air corridors for fly-through traffic, and flown around more expensive neighborhoods.
On the evening when I
published this essay at a coffee shop, a police car passed by as I was about to
go to the shopping center's parking lot, and a few minutes a police helicopter flew
over diagonally. Both seemed to be on a routine basis and duplicative rather than on a coordinated
search. Then a mile away, just after I had stopped at a grocery store, another
police helicopter was making at least ten wide circles over a nice looking
residential neighborhood before flying away. Then just before I reached my
apartment, several miles away, I saw yet another police helicopter (with yet
another in the distance). The next morning on my way to the coffee shop to edit
this essay, I again saw a police helicopter. The local residents may be used to
living in a police state, but we others are not and it doesn't take long for us
to notice it on account of its excessiveness, just as we new-comers notice the
proclivity of the local police departments to refuse to enforce certain laws.
To be sure, surveillance and so many back-up police cars for traffic tickets do
take up resources, including personnel. If half the effort were applied
instead to enforcing masks on public transit when the E.U. and many U.S.
Midwestern and Northeastern states were coronavirus hotspots, Arizona would
have been in a better position going into the winter.
