Restaurants and retail businesses in Florida are now permitted to open their dining rooms to customers – with restrictions. Governor Ron DeSantis’ executive order re-opening businesses calls for local authorities to enforce those rules.
Restaurants that are opening doors to customers are limited to 25 percent capacity indoors and outdoor seating that follows social distancing guidelines. Retail businesses must follow the same 25 percent indoor capacity requirement.
Tallahassee Police Department spokesman Officer Kevin Bradshaw says the agency will provide enforcement in the same way it did for the Governor’s safer-at-home order.
“Locally, we’re going to approach it the way we approached the original order – which was to respond to complaints and ask for voluntary compliance, and educate the folks involved,” Bradshaw told WFSU Monday. “And we’ve had a great degree of success in doing that over the last two months.”
That means the public shouldn’t expect to see TPD officers stopping into restaurants at random and actively looking for violations, Bradshaw says.
“We do understand that there’s concern, maybe, among some people that we would be proactively sending officers into businesses with a tape measure and proactively ensuring compliance – but that is not something we did before and we do not plan to do that now,” the agency spokesman said.
Bradshaw says he didn’t hear any complaints of businesses violating the Governor’s “Phase 1” rules on Monday, its first day in effect.
The Leon County Sheriff’s Office is taking a similar approach to TPD according its spokesman, Deputy Shade McMillian.
“We aren’t going to make a practice of actively patrolling restaurants, or anything of that nature,” McMillian said. “Of course, if we do get a call for service, from a person with concerns of people violating that social distancing guideline through Phase 1, we will take appropriate action.”
Penalties for violating the rules could bring a second-degree misdemeanor charge and a fine up to $500.
