A tailor and military veteran in New York City who reopened his shop during the coronavirus pandemic despite a lockdown order said when police showed up at his door, they thanked him for his military service rather than citing him.
“I was just wondering what happened when the police came?” Fox News host Tucker Carlson asked Eliot Rabin. “The police asked you, ‘Are you open?’ You said, ‘Indeed, I am.’ Then what did they say? Did they give you a ticket?
“No, sir. They did not,” Rabin replied. “In fact, they looked at me, and they said, ‘You’re a veteran.’ I said, ‘Yes, I am.’ And they said, ‘Thank you for your service.’ … People want to walk in, they’re allowed to walk in.”
Rabin, who owns a boutique on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, said he should be allowed to remain open because he “is not forcing” anyone to come into his store and is using “common sense” to operate safely during the pandemic.
“We have maintained our distance, and we have obeyed every single rule, but I feel that this country is being dictated to unnecessarily,” Rabin said. “I think that personally, I’m putting no one in danger.”
The shop owner said it was “ludicrous” liquor stores in the city were allowed to stay open but he was not.
“I find that liquor stores can be existentially dangerous,” he said. “So I opened with the idea that I want to protect my people, protect my country, and I’m not going to allow someone to dictate to me.”
Rabin joked that he had had several major heart procedures, and “I’m still vertical.”
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo this month extended the state’s stay-at-home order through May 15. New York City has the most cases of the coronavirus of any major city in the world, with more than 17,500 deaths from the virus as of Tuesday.
