Corporate America, city governments and federal and local law enforcement across the country are making plans to deal with political instability, civil unrest and violence around the upcoming presidential election.
Concerns range from isolated violent incidents to a long stretch of mass protests, violent confrontations between extremists and widespread property damage, if the outcome of the election remains unclear or is hotly contested for weeks or months, according to security consultants, analysts of extremism, police officials and local elected leaders who spoke with CNN.
“It keeps me up at night,” Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley, who chairs the US Conference of Mayors’ Mayors and Police Chiefs Task Force, about the threat of violence. “I’m also worried that there will be a bogus attempt to prevent the counting of all the ballots, and that also could lead to a variety of unrest in a variety of ways.”
In recent months, federal law enforcement agencies, led by the FBI, have held discussions with sheriffs and local police who would be charged with keeping order in any protests that may surround disputed results, according to US law enforcement officials briefed on the matter. Among the concerns are armed extremists who may try to interfere with or halt vote-counting done by local canvassing boards. Groups ranging from right wing activists and white supremacists to antifa and anarchists have been active in recent months amid the George Floyd protests.
Police department leaders in cities from Baltimore to Seattle and Portland told CNN they have prohibited officers from taking days off around the election. Baltimore Police Detective Chakia Fennoy said, in an email, the department is taking “extra precautions to include opening the Incident Command Room, having dedicated personnel to respond to any issues and closely monitoring any information leading up to the election that may create issues affecting public safety.”
Banks, Fortune 500 companies and other businesses, meanwhile, are working with security consultants to identify steps they should take to minimize potential disruption to their business and protect their employees and assets.
“The stakes are so high, that this political chaos could transcend into something worse, into physical action, in the event that we come up to a contested election,” said Jonathan Wackrow, managing director at Teneo, a management-consulting firm that does corporate risk-assessment.
Wackrow, who is also a CNN law enforcement analyst, said his firm is working with two major US financial institutions and three other Fortune 100 corporations on their preparations.
“I think if you had widespread unrest in major cities, that you will have a definite impact on business operations, (and) potential financial implications as well … so we want to prepare them for the entire spectrum of threats and the consequences those threats may have on their organization, on their people, processes and technology so they can sustain operations in the midst of chaos,” he said.
