DC Prepares For ‘Large Scale Riots’ And Election ‘Civil Unrest’

ANALYSIS – Will things get ugly? Maybe, maybe not. But who will be the culprits? D.C. Assistant City Administrator Chris Rodriguez told lawmakers that D.C. is bracing for the possibility of “large-scale riots and civil unrest” between Election Day Nov. 5 through Jan. 6 and Inauguration Day Jan. 20.

He recently briefed the D.C. Council on the city’s security preparations. No matter which candidate wins, city security officials are preparing for historic crowds in D.C. on Inauguration Day, Rodriguez said.

As Politico reported: “…with memories of the last election still fresh, Washington is awkwardly coming to grips with the idea that there’s a not-zero chance that the national election could spiral into the sort of violent chaos that locals used to think only happens in a politically unstable banana republic.”

It noted:

The odds against a cataclysm, public-safety pros tell me, are long. Yet they’re not long enough for some. In a city accustomed to large political gatherings, there’s not a lot of muscle memory about what to do about the kinds of chaos some are imagining.

Meanwhile, D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) officers are ready for the coming months, Chief of Police Pamela Smith told reporters.

“I want to assure you that the Metropolitan Police Department and all of the D.C. government agencies continue to prepare for these events,” she said.

She added:

The Metropolitan Police Department supports individuals peacefully exercising their First Amendment rights. But I want to be very clear: We will not tolerate any violence of any kind. We will not tolerate any riots. We will not tolerate the destruction of property. We will not tolerate any unlawful behavior. Offenders will be arrested and will be held accountable.

And much of these preparations have already begun. According to The Washington Post:

The entire D.C. police department will deploy through at least the Nov. 5 election to ensure smooth and safe voting and protect other events in the city, Police Chief Pamela A. Smith said Tuesday. She also issued a stern warning against committing violence or intimidating voters.

All eligible 3,300 officers will work 12-hour shifts, with most leave time and vacations canceled. Smith said at a news conference that this is being done “to ensure we have enough officers on the street and in every corner of the District.”

Smith said that authorities know of no credible threat and that there is “no need for any alarm.” The police chief also said extra effort will be required to manage a variety of events expected to bring crowds into the District over the week.

The police chief said the department will activate its Joint Operation Command Center to coordinate with federal authorities. And, if needed, she can call on officers from nearby jurisdictions to help.

Neither Rodriguez nor Smith had previously described the possibility of riots.

Politico added: “Earlier this month, D.C.’s Golden Triangle Business Improvement District — which represents employers on the office-dense western side of downtown Washington — gathered members along with officials from Homeland Security, the Secret Service, the U.S. Park Police and the local Metropolitan Police Department to walk through a tabletop exercise about what might happen if the core of the capital was convulsed by election violence.”

It continued:

Concerned that an exercise about inter-party chaos would appear partisan, the group asked participants to game out what would happen in the event the “Beagle Party” and the “Dalmatian Party” were at each other’s throats following a disputed election.

In the scenario, security staff and HR honchos had to make decisions while wading through deep fakes, reports of mayhem in other cities and images of unknown people popping up on building security cameras. When to send staff home? How to secure the door? Who to call for help?

If the exercise left participants feeling a bit less confused, the very fact that it was necessary remains a subject of embarrassment in a country that thought itself as being better than the fragile democracies whose elections descend into violence.

But where will this potential unrest likely come from? Will it be furious Trump supporters or furious leftists?

While liberals obsess over a possible rerun of the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, others (including liberals who won’t admit it)are justifiably concerned of Antifa-style violent chaos.

Jared Holt, at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue noted, according to Politico that on the right, most believe that anything planned in Washington is a deep-state ploy, a honey pot designed by feds to entrap MAGA followers.

“The types of online communities and the portions of the die-hard Trump base that would be the theoretical foot soldiers in an event like that view D.C. as hostile territory,” Holt said. “I think it was a little different when Trump was in office. There was a perception that he had final say in terms of policing there. That it might work.”

That is the only reason we saw such a huge pro-Trump crowd descend on the Capitol in 2021. And it is unlikely we will see it again, especially not under a Democrat administration.

Still, though it is an almost exclusively Democrat city (92% voted for Biden in 2020), liberals who live in Washington, D.C., are reportedly getting out of town because they expect violence.

And despite the fake narrative, they are likely running away from what is far more likely, which is a rerun of BLMA/Antifa rioting, looting and arson, not MAGA.

Recall that we saw quite a bit of violence on Trump’s inauguration day back in January 2017, much of it I personally witnessed on the streets of DC. It was ugly and scary. But it got very little coverage.

And it … “has largely been forgotten and hand-waved away, because it complicates the Democrats’ preferred narrative that political violence is a right-wing phenomenon.”

One reason it was so quickly forgotten was because federal prosecutors dropped all charges against these leftist extremists. 

Then there was the violent BLM rioting and arson at Lafayette Park just across from the White House in May 2020 that forced the Secret Service to rush Trump into the underground bunker for safety.

I was also there for that one, and witnessed assaults on police, threats to kill Trump, improvised explosives made from commercial fireworks, and plenty of arson.

People should be far more afraid of a REPEAT OF THAT.

National Review notes:

…if there’s going to be right-wing violence in Washington, D.C., in the coming weeks or months, the overwhelming majority of the perpetrators will have to come into the city from somewhere else.

If there’s going to be left-wing violence in D.C. . . . much more of it will be “home grown.”

The outlet concluded:

So sure, some of what we’re seeing in Washington, D.C., right now is Democrats worried about the MAGA crowd traveling into the city from the suburbs, exurbs, and beyond and rioting . . . but a lot of it is non-riot-inclined Democrats fearing the angry young leftist crowd that already lives in the city will take to the streets and rage and rampage.

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