New Orleans had access to effective anti-vehicle barriers before the deadly Bourbon Street attack on New Year’s Eve, which left at least 14 people dead and dozens more wounded. However, the city failed to deploy these barriers until a day after the tragedy. The head of the local police department, Anne Kirkpatrick, admitted she was unaware of their existence.
Kirkpatrick explained Thursday, as Bourbon Street reopened, that additional protections were put in place, including heavy trucks and Archer barriers, which are designed to prevent vehicles from driving onto pedestrian-only areas. Authorities say the attack occurred just after 3 a.m. on Wednesday, when a Texas man, inspired by ISIS, drove a pickup truck onto a crowded sidewalk on Bourbon Street, striking pedestrians before opening fire on police officers, wounding two before dying in a shootout.
The Archer barriers, which were installed the following day, are portable and reusable steel barriers weighing 700 pounds. They are specifically designed to stop a car speeding toward a pedestrian zone and are certified by the Department of Homeland Security. These barriers were credited with preventing casualties in a similar incident at last year's Rose Parade in California.
When asked about the barriers' origin, Kirkpatrick told reporters, "We have them. I didn’t know about them, but we have them, and so we’ve been able now to put them out."
New Orleans purchased the Archer barriers in 2017 from Meridian Rapid Defense Group, according to the company’s CEO, Peter Whitford. He confirmed that the barriers recently deployed on Bourbon Street were identical to those sold eight years ago. Whitford added, "They bought them from us, and I don’t know where they were on that day, so I can’t answer that question" regarding the New Year's Day attack.
The Archer barriers had been used previously in New Orleans during Mardi Gras in 2017, providing protection for the city while allowing pedestrian flow and emergency vehicle access, as noted in a news release by Meridian.
The New Orleans mayor's office and police department did not respond to requests for comment on Thursday afternoon.
Before Wednesday’s attack, the city had recently removed malfunctioning security bollards from Bourbon Street and was in the process of replacing them. On New Year's Eve, Bourbon Street had patrol cars, other barriers, and a significant law enforcement presence, but they were insufficient to stop the attacker, Kirkpatrick explained. “The terrorist just went all the way around up onto the sidewalk,” she said.
When asked whether she was frustrated by not knowing about the Archer barriers, Kirkpatrick refrained from assigning blame. "This is not a matter of pointing blame anywhere — a terrorist is hell-bent on destruction. This man was going to do his best, and if it hadn’t been on Bourbon, he was going to go somewhere else," she said. "We have this. We’re going to implement it. End of story."
The Archer barriers were also credited with preventing a similar tragedy at last year’s Rose Parade in Pasadena, California, where a woman crashed her car into one of the barriers. Pasadena city spokesperson Lisa Derderian stated that the barriers stopped the vehicle from causing harm to the crowd, saying, “If those barriers were not up, she could have more than likely killed people in her path.” Pasadena has used the Archer barriers for the Rose Bowl parade for the past five years, at a cost of $110,000 per year.
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