After several high-profile smash-and-grabs, Stonestown Galleria recently joined the growing ranks of public spaces banning “face coverings that conceal your identity” — a broad enough category to be semi-meaningless, while leaving plenty of room for shenanigans.
On a recent visit, I spotted large signs at each entrance depicting a balaclava, a masked face with a beanie and sunglasses, a face covered by a mask and a cinched-up hood, and someone in a full-on motorcycle helmet. “DON’T IGNORE, REPORT!” the sign declared.
In an unprecedented way, the pandemic normalized mask-wearing in all manner of public areas, whether at the supermarket, a concert, or an outdoor protest. But the ongoing moral panic about crime has created a strange tension around masks, egged on by viral stories of assaults and robberies committed by people concealing their faces.
Crime rates may be falling sharply around the U.S., and youth crime has been on a downward trend for two decades, but that hasn’t quelled the anxiety (or stopped stores from taking advantage of public perception to introduce previously unimaginable “anti-theft” inconveniences for people who just need to shop).
Mask bans, the latest such irritation, have been spreading around the country: In December, the city of Philadelphia initiated a ban on ski masks and balaclavas in some public spaces. Last week, the University of California banned masks that “conceal identity,” spurred by fears of a criminal presence at pro-Palestine protests. In Nassau County, New York, a mask ban was signed into law by a Trump-supporting Republican who claimed “pro-criminal” Democratic policies had made it necessary to crack down.
But what happens when you break the rules? And who are these bans actually affecting? Last Thursday afternoon, I strolled Stonestown to find out. I roamed all over the mall, including inside the Apple Store and Target, in a variety of fits that should have gotten me reported.
Yet fellow shoppers, private security guards, and even a San Francisco Police Department officer didn’t seem to notice or care — at least not until my final, and most blatant, outfit.
Look 1: Keeping it minimal
My first outfit was simple: Just a blue beanie, a black medical mask, and some oversized sunglasses. It concealed nearly my entire face, leaving slivers of my cheeks and forehead visible. Lo and behold, nobody said anything, no matter how many times I walked right next to a guard.
Look 2: Going dark
I decided to escalate the look, keeping the mask and adding a black cap and black and grey jacket with a hood, which I pulled tightly over my head. Once again, nobody said anything — not even the cop working inside the Apple Store whom I paced in front of, hoping for a reaction.
Look 3: Baby’s first balaclava
Surely, I figured, donning an actual black balaclava would do the trick. I kept it casual with a white cap and a cream hoodie — nondescript colors that would attract little attention if I were to, say, flee from the scene of a smash-and-grab. Once again, nobody stared or spoke to me. A guy at the Apple Store even offered to help me pick out an iPhone 15.
Lightning Round: Do I look up to no good, yet?
I cobbled together a final fit: the black and grey jacket with the hood up, the balaclava, and a black cap to hide my eyes from cameras looming above. A few guards in the signature yellow-and-black jackets of the firm AlliedUniversal stood in the atrium, watching a DJ perform.
As I walked by, one of them stopped me. “Hey, bro? You can’t wear all that in here,” they said, gesturing me over.
Finally. Unsure of how to proceed, I blurted out an excuse: “I have a skin sensitivity. Maybe if I take the cap off?”
This, of course, was a lie. But it proved to be an interesting fork in the road for the guards, and after a quick deliberation, the call came through on the radio: I was free to go, with my balaclava on.
They were annoyed (naturally) when I then identified myself as a reporter. But the person who stopped me, who did not provide their name because they are not authorized to speak to media, noted that they do bust people every day.
“Oh, it’s a constant problem. We’re always having to stop kids with the ski masks,” they told me. (AlliedUniversal did not respond to a request for comment.)
Why we keep policing clothes
For Jody Armour, a professor at the University of Southern California who is an expert on racial issues in law and policing, the current bans recall a history of discrimination based on clothing choices — particularly when those clothes are worn by Black and brown people.
“These new policies could be discriminatory in its enforcement process, but it’s also about potential racism in the formulation of the policy. Why are they coming up with these rules in the first place, and who are they responding to?” Armour told me.
A resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1980s and ‘90s led to a variety of “anti-hooding” laws intended to protect people from the anonymous terror of racist whites. But Armour explained that those laws were later used by police to justify stopping Black and brown youth for wearing hoodies and ski masks, even when they had no evidence they were attempting to conceal themselves, let alone commit a crime.
“There is a long history of police and security going after sartorial choices of minority youth from socially marginalized groups. So here is another accessory that we’re going to tell you is unacceptable because it’s associated with criminality, and we’re associating you with criminality through it,” Armour said. “It’s not just racial … it’s generational and about class, too.”
Plenty of kids are wearing ski masks and balaclavas right now, not to commit retail theft, but because they’ve been popularized by artists like Pooh Shiesty and drill rapper SL. That should be reason enough to allow it, Armour argues. Broad rights to free expression, even if it might seem sketchy, are key to protecting our collective agency, he notes. (The face-concealment ban has been in effect since last year, but the signage indicating restricted items were installed earlier this month, according to a Stonestown spokesperson.)
Every outfit I wore at Stonestown could theoretically be used to get away with a crime, which is purportedly the point of the ban. And yet, I was profiled and deemed not a threat. As Philadelphia is realizing, enforcing such a policy with consistency, and without discrimination, is one hell of a tightrope to walk; after nearly nine months of deliberation, there is still no comprehensive plan from Philadelphia police.
Would Stonestown’s new rule stop a half-dozen masked people sprinting straight to a Kay Jewelers and cleaning it out? Emphatically, no. There’s not a shred of evidence that suggests a mask ban will help stop crime. But it does open a Pandora’s box of inconsistent enforcement — and all the ugliness that comes with it, too.
Editor’s note: This story was updated at 2:20 p.m. on Aug. 21 to include new information on the face-concealment policy from a Stonestown spokesperson.
