OMAK — Omak city officials say they were not aware of hostile incidents at the city library until NCW Libraries publicly said it was considering closing the branch.
NCW Libraries officials on Wednesday said they were looking at closing their Omak branch’s doors after a series of aggressive confrontations with visitors not wanting to wear masks.
The Omak Police Department has logged five incidents by the library this year, and none of those involved hostility toward staff, Omak Police Chief Daniel Christensen said Monday.
The library should be reporting hostile incidents to the police department, he said. “We’re literally a block away.”
No one has reached out to city officials about the library potentially closing its public facility, he said.
Barbara Walter, NCW Libraries executive director, said Monday she was not aware of any police reports being filed after recent anti-masking confrontations at the library.
Libraries across NCW have encountered visitors not wanting to wear a masks, she said. NCW Libraries does not report every one of those incidents, she said.
A conversation would be had with city officials in Omak before a decision, such as closing the library, was made, she said. “Closing would be our last, last, last option,” she said.
NCW Libraries issued a Nov. 24 news release saying it may close the Omak Library’s indoor areas and switch to curbside service if anti-mask hostilities continued.
The Omak library will call the police “if it escalates to a point where the staff feel uncomfortable” or threatened, she said.
Aggressive anti-mask incidents only got to that point once, when a visitor spat on a librarian, said Walter.
Cindy Gagné, Omak mayor, said the city is looking into the library incidents, but that she has not heard of any anti-mask occurrences in town.
“I was a little surprised that there is an issue,” she said. “I kind of am at a loss.”
People occasionally have been frustrated by state masking regulations but nothing has risen to needing police intervention, the mayor said.
The masking mandate has been a source of irritation for some, “oversight generally is,” she said. There probably are a fair amount of people in Omak who are tired of the mandate, the mayor said.
