CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- The Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection announced Friday that the most common business violations to the COVID-19 reopening guidelines are failure to ensure proper social distancing and failure to ensure that employers and customers are wearing face coverings.
BACP announced investigators will continue to hold businesses accountable to all of the reopening guidelines, especially as we approach Halloween. The department said they will particularly focus on those two common violations, as they announced the most updated enforcement numbers.
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Since reopening began on June 3, BACP has conducted 2,381 investigations and issued citations on 7 percent of these investigations, to a total of 149 businesses. A total of 114 businesses have been cited for not following the face covering requirements – 86 of those businesses failed to ensure that customers were wearing face coverings and 70 failed to have employees wearing face coverings. Additionally, 72 businesses have been cited for failure to ensure six feet of social distancing, 17 were above indoor capacity and 10 were open or selling alcohol later than their mandated hours. Note that many businesses were cited for multiple violations, so the individual citation numbers do not add up to the total businesses cited.
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In addition to the citations outlined above, which can lead to fines of up to $10,000 each, BACP has issued 42 one-day Closure Orders, and long-term Closure Orders to three businesses for egregious and repeated violations of the reopening guidelines, including Wise Owl, located at 324 S. Racine; Cork and Kerry, located at 10614 S. Western; and The Lotus Black, located at 1540 W. North.
BACP said the majority of investigations are based on complaints, and the rate of complaints has slowed down from a high of over 41 per day in July to 22 per day since the beginning of September. Since reopening began on June 3, BACP has received a total of 3,902 complaints.
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Additionally, since reopening was announced, BACP has also made approximately 10,000 outreach calls directly to businesses and held 27 webinars with over 3,000 total participants.
As the city enters the second weekend since the easing of phase four restrictions on Oct. 1, BACP is reminding all of Chicago’s businesses of the critical importance in continuing to comply with the COVID-19 reopening guidelines.