Police stopping traffic from crossing a major sacramento street, drill?

At around 8:30 a.m. last Sunday my boyfriend was driving to work and he got to one of the main streets in our area and a police officer was in the middle of the intersection directing traffic.

okay, so that is not so unusual. one could assume there was something on the other side of the street that civilians were being directed AROUND....i.e. a gas leak, stand-off or something like that. THE WEIRD PART is that there were cars coming from the other side of the main street too, the only detour going on was NOT allowing the cars to actually cross the street, though traffic was normal on both sides of the street. i don't even know if i'm explaining that very well. hah

SO my boyfriend, of course, turned as the officer directed. he tried to turn at the next street and an officer was doing the same thing, not allowing traffic to cross the street. and the next street...and all the way down until the street T's and you have to cross over the street police were detouring on.

you would think if something were going on they would kind of barricade a couple blocks all the way around, not just keep people from crossing a busy street.......

i dunno, seemed like some kind of drill....at first i thought it would be like an in-case-power-goes-out drill....but then they would just direct traffic...not detour it. so wtf...i've never seen anything like this before.