D.C., Maryland and Virginia all have ordinances in place that limit large gatherings and require people to wear masks during COVID-19. But according to health departments and police, enforcement of those gatherings has not been particularly punitive, with few area residents receiving fines or citations in connection with mass gatherings.

While there have been several highly publicized gatherings in recent weeks, it’s not clear how many large social events are truly happening, and whether those events — particularly ones held outdoors—are significant drivers of infections in the area. When gatherings have made the news, local elected officials have called them public health concerns, but have expressed some hesitation about whether, in a summer full of protests about policing, it makes sense to dispatch law enforcement to break them up.

When a large gathering does happen, it can be hard to miss: Photos of large crowds of maskless bar-goers in Arlington’s Clarendon neighborhood circulated on social media—and the Arlington County Board issued new rules about congregating on streets and sidewalks shortly afterwards. A crowd of about 200 people in Southeast D.C.’s Oxon Run Park led to complaints from Advisory Neighborhood Commission members who wanted to see police make more of an effort to break it up.

Another social event—a block party of about 400 people in Southeast D.C.’s Greenway neighborhood—ended in tragedy: 22 people were shot and one person was killed. And while some encouraged people to blame the shooters and not the party organizers, others questioned why police did not do more to prevent a crowd that large from amassing. And on Friday, President Donald Trump spoke at an event in Arlington where a large group of people sat inside, close together and many without masks.

Police have, in some instances, exercised their authority to arrest people who violate social distancing guidelines. According to NBC4, dozens of drivers in Maryland faced charges for violating the emergency stay-at-home order in effect during the spring, often when getting pulled over for other infractions. In New York City, the police department’s approach to enforcement disproportionately punished Black people, who represented 35 out of 40 social distancing-related arrests in the spring.

But in D.C. and its surrounding suburbs, police say they have not actively dispersed a significant number of mass gatherings this summer—and they haven’t issued many citations in connection with them.

Violating the mass gatherings rule can be punishable by fines or jail time in D.C., Maryland, and Virginia, but no local jurisdictions so far have reported sending someone to jail over a mass gathering during the pandemic.

Police in Prince George’s County have dispersed between four and five large gatherings “over the past few weeks,” according to an email from a police department spokesperson on Thursday. Most of the events had about 50 people in attendance, and one had more than 100 people. Over the phone, the spokesperson emphasized that policing gatherings was normal for the department even in pre-pandemic times, because they are in some cases called to address noise complaints and “quality of life offenses.”

During the pandemic, the spokesperson wrote, “We typically try to prevent them from occurring in the first place by making contact with the promoter/organizer beforehand. We explain the safety issues and the consequences for hosting a mass gathering.”

To the spokesperson’s knowledge, no one in the county had been fined for violating the mask order. In Maryland, masks are required in all indoor public spaces, and all outdoor public spaces where it’s not possible to keep a safe distance from others.

To date, the Prince George’s county police spokesperson said citations have only been given for one location, which held multiple mass gatherings. (Likely this was a series of three large parties at the Broadwater Mansion in Upper Marlboro, which resulted in citations at the end of last month, according to reporting from WUSA9.) Only organizers of mass gatherings—not people who attended them—received citations, the police spokesperson wrote.

WAMU/DCist has reached out to Montgomery County with questions about enforcement of mass gathering rules and mask policies but did not receive answers. During a county media briefing on Wednesday, Emergency Management and Homeland Security Director Earl Stoddard said that Montgomery County was the location of nine of the 94 alleged violations of mask and social distancing orders reported on a recently-launched state hotline.

A spokesperson for D.C.’s police department did not answer specific questions about how many times police broke up mass gatherings and how many fines had been issued for violating the city’s mask order. Instead, the department responded with a statement emphasizing education and voluntary compliance, saying that MPD’s responsibility to ensure public safety “includes those who may be impacted by large gatherings that violate the Mayor’s Order and unnecessarily put vulnerable members of the community at risk.”

“As always, we will work with our partners to educate the public and encourage voluntary compliance,” said the statement.

Virginia has more relaxed restrictions on mass gatherings: Gov. Ralph Northam is limiting social gatherings to 50% of event space capacity, or 250 people, whichever number is smaller. A spokesperson for Arlington County says “there have been no reports of social gatherings of this size” in the locality.

Arlington County’s police department has not issued any citations for mass gatherings, and has not levied any fines for people who flout rules regarding mask-wearing.

There was one case where Arlington County police were dispatched to a large crowd, the spokesperson wrote. It was a group of people gathered outside a Megamart on Columbia Pike, waiting for free groceries. The store had advertised a giveaway of 800 bags of food.

“This resulted in a large crowd causing traffic and pedestrian gridlock in the area,” the spokesperson wrote. “Due to concerns over social distancing and crowd restrictions, the management of Megamart ended the event early and handed out vouchers for those that did not receive groceries. The crowd dispersed without incident and no citations were issued.”

The Arlington County Board also adopted an emergency ordinance on July 31 prohibiting congregations of more than three people on sidewalks and in streets. Violating the ordinance is punishable by fines of up to $100, but a spokesperson said in an email Thursday that to date, the county had not issued any such fines.

A spokesperson for Fairfax County also said police there have not issued any fines or citations for mass gatherings.

“The Virginia Department of Health and local health districts seek first to educate, assist, and inform individuals and businesses about the dangers of COVID-19 before any enforcement action is contemplated,” the Fairfax County Health Department wrote in an emailed statement. “At the Fairfax County Health District, we are not planning any unannounced visits outside of the inspections that we might conduct for businesses under permit or as part of foodborne illness investigations. We have proactively communicated with business owners throughout the pandemic as guidance has evolved.”

From their own accounts, local governments are opting not to use the most punitive options at their disposal to address large gatherings. Some public health experts agree this is the right approach.

Julia Marcus, an epidemiologist and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, recently wrote in The Atlantic that a punitive crackdown on outdoor gatherings would only lead people to gather indoors, where research has shown the risk of COVID-19 transmission to be significantly higher.

“If officials want to help people avoid the potential harms of parties, they need to earn the public’s trust as partners who offer scientific and practical advice on how to sustain well-being in a pandemic—not as law enforcers from whom the public will want to hide,” Marcus wrote.

Local elected officials have expressed a commitment to controlling the size of social gatherings, although they have acknowledged the tensions that can arise from dispatching police to do this work.

Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks said in a press conference last month that there would be “no more parties with hundreds of people in attendance,” and emphasized that anyone who violates ordinances concerning large gatherings could be charged with a misdemeanor carrying a maximum penalty of a year in jail or a $5,000 fine. At the same time, Alsobrooks said that police in the county have been “abused, cursed at, and treated poorly” when they attempt to break up large gatherings—“and some of them, to be honest with you, are afraid in this climate.”

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser has similarly expressed a desire to prevent large gatherings—but has gone back and forth on the extent to which police should be used to address violations of public health rules.

Bowser has said that retailers dealing with shoppers who refuse to wear a mask “should call the police and the police will enforce it.” But Bowser has also pushed back against the suggestion that police should be enforcing the mass gatherings rule more aggressively.

“Let’s not act like we haven’t spent the past six weeks saying that the police shouldn’t lock up young Black people. Let’s not pretend that’s not happening,” said Bowser in a July press conference, referencing weeks of local protests against racism in policing. “So our communities have to take some responsibility, including ANC commissioners, in saying, ‘Look, this activity is anti-public health.’”

Globally, researchers have identified mass gatherings, particularly those in indoor spaces, as a driver of a disproportionate number of COVID-19 infections and virus-related deaths. There is no publicly available data to confirm whether mass gatherings above the legal limits — 50 people in Maryland and D.C., and 250 people in Virginia — are a significant driver of infections in the region.

Data from local health departments show that in general, social gatherings are associated with a significant number of COVID-19 infections, along with other activities including work and travel.

Katherine Feldman, who leads contact tracing for the Maryland Health Department, said that 20% of people interviewed between July 10 and July 27 said they had attended a gathering of 10 people or more. (The remaining 80% either didn’t answer the question, said they didn’t know, refused to answer the question, or said they hadn’t attended a gathering.)

This contact tracing data can tell us that there is an association between people who get COVID-19 and people who have attended such gatherings — but it does not necessarily indicate that gatherings were the source of their infection. And other activities are just as popular among people who got the virus in Maryland: The percentage of infected people in Maryland who said they had attended gatherings of 10 people or more was also the same as the percentage of people who said they had worked outside their home. Between June 15 and July 26, 20% of the total number of patients interviewed by Maryland contact tracers said they had worked outside their home in the last two weeks.

D.C. shared similar numbers at a recent press conference, saying that about 15% of people interviewed by contact tracers had attended gatherings of five or more people. Of those, 90% said the gathering they attended had fewer than 50 people, the legal limit for gatherings under Mayor Muriel Bowser’s pandemic rules. About 10% had traveled during the period where they may have been infectious. D.C. Health Director Dr. LaQuandra Nesbitt did not give specific data on work outside the home, but said that social events, travel, and workplaces were the main activities contact tracers were connecting with virus spread.

This summer was also home to a number of particularly massive outdoor gatherings: Large scale protests over racism in policing that brought thousands into D.C.’s streets. And notably, District officials said they did not lead to a spike in infections.