NEW YORK (AP) — Police within the suburbs of New York Metropolis made the primary arrest beneath a brand new native regulation banning face masks, officers introduced Tuesday.

Nassau County Police say officers on Sunday evening responded to reviews of a suspicious individual on a avenue close to the Levittown and Hicksville city line, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) east of Manhattan.

They discovered Wesslin Omar Ramirez Castillo carrying black clothes and a black ski masks that lined his face, aside from his eyes.

The division mentioned the 18-year-old resident displayed different suspicious habits, together with making an attempt to hide a big bulge in his waistband and refusing to adjust to the officers’ instructions.

Officers say the bulge turned out to be a 14-inch knife. Ramirez Castillo was positioned beneath arrest with out additional incident, police mentioned.

He was arraigned Monday in Nassau County District Court docket in Hempstead on misdemeanor prices of felony possession of a weapon and obstructing governmental administration, in response to Nassau County District Legal professional Anne Donnelly’s workplace.

Lt. Scott Skrynecki, a police division spokesperson, mentioned Ramirez Castillo can even be going through a misdemeanor violation of the face masks regulation within the coming days.

Nassau County Government Bruce Blakeman, a Republican who signed the masks ban into regulation earlier this month, mentioned Sunday’s arrest confirmed the rule is working.

“Our law enforcement officials have been ready to make use of the masks ban laws in addition to different components to cease and interrogate a person who was carrying a weapon with the intent to have interaction in a theft,” he mentioned in an emailed assertion. “Passing this regulation gave police one other software to cease this harmful felony.”

Keith Ross, a felony justice professor on the John Jay School of Prison Justice in New York Metropolis, mentioned police didn’t essentially want the brand new regulation to cease and query Ramirez Castillo, but it surely helped bolster their justification.

“The regulation offers police, on the very least, affordable suspicion to conduct a cease,” the retired New York Metropolis police officer defined by telephone. “Below affordable suspicion, police can forcibly cease an individual in New York state if they’re suspected of committing a felony or a penal regulation misdemeanor, which is the place this new regulation falls.”

However Scott Banks, attorney-in chief on the Authorized Assist Society of Nassau County, which is representing Ramirez Castillo, challenged that notion.

“There isn’t a foundation to consider that carrying a face masks was meant to hide id or felony habits, and if that was the premise of the cease I consider there’s a foundation to conclude the cease was illegal,” he wrote in an e-mail.

Skrynecki declined to remark, including that police and county officers will talk about the incident at a information convention Wednesday.

The New York Civil Liberties Union, which has criticized the brand new regulation, repeated its warning that the masks ban is “ripe for selective enforcement by a police division with a historical past of aggression and discrimination.”

Incapacity Rights of New York, a bunch that advocates for individuals with disabilities, filed a authorized problem final week arguing that the masks regulation is unconstitutional and discriminates in opposition to individuals with disabilities.

The federal class motion lawsuit seeks a short lived restraining order and preliminary injunction to right away cease enforcement of the ban.

The Masks Transparency Act was authorised by the county’s Republican-controlled legislature in response to “antisemitic incidents, typically perpetrated by these in masks” because the Oct. 7 begin of the Israel-Hamas battle.

The regulation makes it a misdemeanor punishable by as much as a 12 months in jail and a $1,000 nice for anybody in Nassau to put on a face protecting to cover their id in public. It exempts individuals who put on masks “for well being, security, non secular or cultural functions, or for the peaceable celebration of a vacation or comparable non secular or cultural occasion for which masks or facial coverings are typically worn.”

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This story was first printed on Aug. 27, 2024. It was up to date on Aug. 28, 2024, to appropriate the courtroom during which the defendant was arraigned. It was Nassau County District Court docket in Hempstead, not Household Court docket in Westbury.

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Observe Philip Marcelo at twitter.com/philmarcelo.