Questions are swirling about the security measures that were in place on Bourbon Street in New Orleans when a driver rammed a pickup truck into a crowd, killing 10, on New Year’s Day.
Security experts say there were barricades in place, but that it was easy for the driver to get around them.
“They are used to large foot traffic, large crowds gathered, and what they’ll do is block off streets where that heavy foot traffic will be with the wooden horses, so essentially a wooden 2×4 or 2×6 that’s straddled across an A-frame barricade, and so that really keeps honest people honest,” said Todd McGhee, 7News law enforcement expert. “They’re not really providing what we would consider a sense of security.”
New Orleans Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick said the man who drove a vehicle into the crowd of people went around the barricades and said he was “hell-bent on creating the carnage and damage that he did.”
“They’ll leverage the media the best they can, but only way to do it is target high-profile events,” she said.
Incidents like these have happened time and time again. In December, a car plowed through a crowd at a Christmas market in Germany. Several similar attacks happened in recent years.
In the wake of a vehicle ramming attack in Nice, France in 2016, New Orleans installed steel mechanical barricades in the French Quarter the next year.
McGhee said the wooden horses used in New Orleans are a lower level of security than what is used in Massachusetts, which includes Department of Public Works front loaders and dump trucks, which cannot be breached.
“It’s really just a diversion of traffic, not necessarily a security enhancement,” he said.
McGhee added that people target large crowds because they want to get world attention and expose their grievances.
Rob D’Amico, a counterterrorism expert who spent many years with the FBI, said investigators are most likely trying to figure out whether the driver was the only actor.
“They’re looking at the electronic trail. So, electronics give away a lot, but they’re gonna have to get some emergency search warrants. First thing they want to get out of the way is, ‘Was he acting with anyone else?’ They’re going to plan for that he was, especially with the Sugar Bowl and other events around the country,” D’Amico said.
“Right now it’s all about setting priority, so one — having a dual headquarters New Orleans PD and FBI. FBI is in charge of the terrorism taskforce. They’re probably looking more at securing the Sugar Bowl right now,” he continued.
The Sugar Bowl is an annual college football game played at the Superdome in New Orleans.
“So you’re going to have evidence response, you’re going to have all the CCTVs being collected at one point, all the witnesses. So you’re just going to formulate teams to do each one of those, and then they’re going to constantly communicate back and forth who needs more resources. As the Sugar Bowl gets closer, some of those resources will probably shift over that way,” D’Amico said.
This is a developing news story; stay with 7NEWS on-air and online for the latest details.
