Police Break Up Amish Barn Party After Someone Snitches On Them For Violating Social Distancing

Social-distancing snitches have come for the Amish.

The Amish have apparently been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic, so last week, Ohio’s Geauga County health commissioner, Thomas Quade, sent a letter to Amish bishops warning them about the dangers in their community, Fox News reported. Quade, according to the outlet, also asked the Amish community to stop church services for a month to stop the spread of the virus.

“It is disappointing,” Quade told the outlet. “I wish it wouldn’t happen. Those folks are all placing themselves at risk.”

But over the weekend, a large gathering of Amish was broken up by police, with one person getting arrested, another issued a summons, and two charged with underage drinking. Police were called to the property after someone called them to report a violation of the state’s stay-at-home orders, Fox reported. The arrest occurred just after midnight in Huntsburg Township.

“There is some concern out there and we are getting reports of large gatherings happening,” Geauga Sheriff Scott Hildenbrand told Fox 8. “If we get calls, or find out about them, we will go there, break them up and get them out of there. We won’t tolerate this and we have to keep everybody safe.”

“When we got there, there was a barn full of people, some of them ran,” Hildenbrand added. “There was one that was too intoxicated to run and that person had to be transported by ambulance.”

The arrest was for disorderly conduct, while another person was issued a summons for violating the stay-at-home order, the outlet reported.

Fox 8 reported it had received photos weeks earlier from several Huntsburg residents that showed large gatherings in the Amish community despite the stay-at-home order.

Fox News reported: “The Amish are a Christian community known for simple living. As of 2019, there were about 336,235 Amish living in the U.S. Around 76,000 live in Ohio, according to Amish studies organization The Young Center. Only Pennsylvania has a larger Amish population.”

The police would likely not have been called were the state not under a coronavirus lockdown. This type of incident has been occurring with some regularity since the coronavirus pandemic came to the U.S. While this incident involved a large group of people having a party that would otherwise not have been broken up, other incidents involve single people or families clashing with police, including a father who was arrested for teaching his daughter T-Ball, or the man who was paddle-boating by himself off the coast of California and was approached by police or the numerous examples of pastors and church-goers getting hassled for continuing to worship – even when they remain in their cars some distance from each other. None of these people would be on the wrong side of the law were it not for coronavirus policies.