On Thursday, the Beverly Hills Police Department made an announcement during a meeting of the city’s Chamber of Commerce. On November 3rd, election day, the cops will be shutting down Rodeo Drive, one of the swankiest and most expensive shopping districts in the country, to all traffic. That means both vehicular traffic and pedestrians. They’ll be using concrete barricades and manning the barriers with officers in riot gear.

But why? Are they worried about another COVID outbreak among the shoppers? Is there some need to divert traffic as people make their way to their polling places if they haven’t figured out the mail-in voting scheme by then? Nope. They’re trying to prevent another mass incident of rioting and looting in the stores carrying some of the priciest merchandise in the world. (CBS Los Angeles)

The news was announced during a Beverly Hills Chamber of Commerce (BHCC) meeting Thursday.

Terming it a “hard closure,” Beverly Hills Assistant Chief of Police Marc Coopwood told the BHCC his department is working on a plan to close Rodeo Drive to both drivers and pedestrians between Santa Monica and Wilshire Boulevards.

“So we are going to have the K-rail cement-type barricades, where it’s not going to allow any vehicle or traffic into the Rodeo Drive area,” Coopwood said.

The Chief of Police stressed that these plans could still change if their intelligence leads them to believe the threat has decreased. But how likely is that? They’ve learned from experience precisely how these “peaceful protesters” operate. Earlier this year the rioting and looting on Rodeo Drive got so bad that they had to call in the National Guard. Some of the businesses there still haven’t reopened after the rioters burned them down.

The police in Beverly Hills have no doubt also been keeping an eye on what’s been happening recently in other major cities. The upscale shops in the SoHo district of Manhatten (known as the Rodeo Drive of the east coast) are still being emptied by looters on a weekly basis. In San Francisco, an entire string of drug stores has simply shut down because they’ve been looted to the point of insolvency. So it’s not as if the Beverly Hills Police are acting out of paranoia.

But still, the timing doesn’t make sense at first glance. The cops aren’t releasing whatever intelligence they’ve gathered leading to this announcement, but it’s a curious choice. Why would you be worried about rioting on the day of the election? We won’t know the outcome until late in the evening under even the most optimistic of circumstances. I picture election day being a moment when the country is figuratively holding its collective breath. Sure, I can definitely see the potential for massive rioting and looting on the following day if Donald Trump pulls off an unexpected victory. The liberals will be losing their minds and they’ve already endorsed looting as a form of free expression. Liberal media figures have been planning for a post-election apocalypse for months.

But on the day of the election? If anyone is out there emptying and burning the stores on that Tuesday, it won’t have anything to do with George Floyd, Donald Trump, racism or any other supposedly reasonable justification for riots. Just as with so many other “peaceful protests,” it will be an excuse to steal everything that’s not nailed down and cause as much chaos and destruction as they can get away with, with very little fear of repercussions for their actions.