A brouhaha over mask use on a Steamship Authority shuttle bus erupted on June 21 when masked passengers boarded and found passengers inside not wearing face coverings.
Exchanges between the two sets of passengers evidently became so heated, the driver had to pull over and admonish both sides, which still didn’t quell the dispute. The two sides argued the whole trip from the Palmer lot to the Woods Hole terminal, according to SSA spokesman Sean Driscoll.
At one point someone called the Falmouth Police Department.
In an email to The Times, Lt. Douglas DeCosta provided incident notes from the call:
“A caller on SSA bus 8 reported a disturbance,” he wrote. “The caller later advised us that the bus had made it to Woods Hole. Finally, an Environmental Police Officer advised our [department] that both parties were separated and each party was being put on a different boat.”
Driscoll said two people were on the bus without masks around noon when two people boarded with masks and “they exchanged words.” The bus driver told them to “knock it off” but they persisted, he said.
From what he has been able to learn, Driscoll said the people who boarded with masks asked the people inside the bus without masks to move further away and those people “took umbrage at that.”
The bus driver was forced to pull over at the Elks Lodge to try to quell the argument, Driscoll said. It didn’t work. They kept at each other all the way down to Woods Hole.
Driscoll said he was unable to shed light on Environmental Police intervention or the separation of the two sets of people onto two different ferries.
Asked why the maskless people were able to board the bus, Driscoll said, “There was nobody else on the bus, so they were able to socially distance.”
He went on to say, “it was not a fight we were going to pick” at that point.
“It’s a tricky thing right now because of politics and the pigheadedness that goes along with the mask issue,” he added.
Buses are marked with signs that read, “Wear masks inside shuttle.”
All in all, he said “our frontline employees are doing a great job under difficult circumstances,”
While not familiar with the incident, SSA board chairman Jim Malkin said, “It’s in everyone’s best interests to wear masks to protect themselves and others.”
He added that the issue has polarized parts of the nation — ”people are in one camp or the other. There’s no reasonable discussion anymore.”
The Times has placed an inquiry with the Environmental Police regarding the incident.
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Bus dispute erupts over masks - Martha's Vineyard Times
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