Though officials have not heard of any planned protests or potential civil unrest in Malibu, the Malibu/Lost Hills Sheriff’s Station has amped up law enforcement presence in Malibu in anticipation of the national election on Tuesday, Nov. 3, according to LASD Lieutenant Hector Mancinas.
The station has been running patrols on 12-hour–rather than standard eight-hour–shifts since Sunday, Nov. 1. This increases the number of officers working at a given moment.
“Instead of there being three shifts per day, there’s only two,” Mancianas said. “You’re taking away one shift and now you’re dividing one shift into two other shifts, increasing the personnel.”
Mancinas said that no businesses in Malibu had been boarded up, as far as the department knows. When The Malibu Times Multimedia Director Julie Ellerton drove through the Civic Center on Monday, she also reported no signs of businesses boarding up–in contrast to downtown Los Angeles and nearby Santa Monica, which CBS LA reported had “reinforcements” up on “restaurants, apartment buildings and shops.”
“I think the stores are wise to board up; I think there is going to be trouble during the election,” Santa Monica resident Julie Desnick told CBS.
During this summer’s protests, Malibu saw no looting, while downtown Los Angeles and Santa Monica did experience looting and violence.
Nationwide, “store owners [were] on edge from break-ins during the summer, when looters took advantage of a nationwide wave of civil unrest following the police killing of George Floyd,” NPR reported, calling the plywood coverings “an eerie sight in a country built on the idea of a peaceful transition of power.”
Such panels were reported in major cities like Boston, New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Detroit and Washington, DC.
Mancinas encouraged Malibu residents who might feel unsafe or uncomfortable to call the sheriff’s department’s emergency line in the case of an emergency or their business line for all other needs. The sheriff’s non-emergency number is 818.878.1808. For an emergency, dial 9-1-1.