New Orleans attack raises familiar debate: Can Bourbon Street be made safe?

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NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The second guessing began before bodies were recovered from the rubble of the deadly truck attack on Bourbon Street.

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A law firm registered survivors of what it called a “predictable and preventable” tragedy. Politicians have evaded blame for a recent mass casualty event at New Orleans’ notorious adult playground. The investigations targeted the ill-fated removal of street bollards, steel bollards designed to restrict vehicular access.

But as the city seeks to recover and beef up security ahead of next month’s Super Bowl and Carnival season, law enforcement and community leaders face an existential question as old as the entertainment district: Can Bourbon Street be protected in a way that preserves its unique character? Celebrations around the clock?

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“Once we start hearing what it’s actually going to take to secure the French Quarter and the Mardi Gras parade routes, I don’t know if this city is going to have the appetite for all that,” said Rafael Goenesch, a former district attorney. He is the Chairman of the Urban Crime Commission Oversight Group.

“If we tried to make New Orleans as safe as an airport, people wouldn’t like it,” he said. “This is not Disney World.”

Shock and grief have given way to finger-pointing over whether additional security could have stopped — or mitigated — the Islamic State-inspired attack, which killed 14 people when Shams al-Din Jabbar drove a pickup truck into a New Year’s crowd.

In the difficult days since, proposals for new safety measures have ranged from banning vehicular traffic in the French Quarter to turning the historic district into a public park.

Many locals who depend on tourism agree that something has to give.

“It’s very wide open. It’s very trustworthy here,” said Brian Casey, 53, a New Orleans native who has worked on Bourbon Street since the late 1990s and waits tables at the upscale Galatoires restaurant, which opened in 1905. The attack while the bodies were mutilated in front of the institution.

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Bourbon Street should have been turned into a pedestrian mall long ago: “There are people watching you who will get you, so you have to be careful,” Casey said.

Much of the immediate focus has been on the absence of the poles, which stopped working reliably and were replaced before the Super Bowl.

City leaders have been criticized for the timing of this project and for failing to implement an adequate replacement during their reform. A lawsuit filed Thursday on behalf of the victims claimed the city “had years of opportunity” to fix the vulnerabilities.

But six current and former Louisiana law enforcement officials called the barrier case a mere pretext, saying that even if they had been working, they may not have been able to prevent the attack given the way Jabbar appeared intent on causing the carnage.

The broader safety dilemma is more complex, they said, given the density of the neighborhood’s alcohol-fueled crowds and the structural challenges inherent in an early 18th-century neighborhood built for horse-drawn carriages. Policing here is more complicated in a city known for high crime rates, a chronic shortage of officers and a new state law that allows the carrying of concealed firearms without a permit.

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“I don’t know of any other place that has the same challenges in terms of protecting people,” said Ronnie Jones, a public safety consultant who served with the Louisiana State Police for 32 years, including as deputy superintendent.

“A lot of public safety people don’t want to talk about it, but we can’t guarantee that everyone who goes into the French Quarter will be safe,” Jones said. “There’s a trade-off here, and we’ve never found that balance.”

The city’s newly appointed security consultant, William J. Bratton, a former New York City police commissioner, said he recognizes the importance of maintaining a festive atmosphere during Carnival even as he works with the city police to beef up security over the next few months.

“One of the things I talked about is developing security provisions that don’t change Mardi Gras, don’t change its flavor, its excitement, its nature,” Bratton said at a news conference this week. “To develop security protocols that don’t become too intrusive and destructive.”

The New Year’s attack was far from the first fatal vehicle accident on Bourbon Street.

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In 1972, one person died and 18 others were injured when a teenager fleeing police in a stolen car crashed into metal barriers and sped off at 70 mph (about 113 km/h). Ten years later, a man smashed through steel barriers and crashed into nearly seven buildings, injuring at least 11 people. In 1995, a drunken 63-year-old man drove a beer truck into a crowd of people attending a St. Patrick’s Day parade, killing one of them. And 38 were injured.

More recent tragedies on Bourbon Street have involved gun violence, including several deadly shootings in the past year. In 2014, a mass shooting killed a 21-year-old woman and wounded nine others, including a bystander who was shot in the cheek. Two years later, one person was killed and nine others were injured in a shooting.

Many of those incidents have sparked similar calls for change and accountability, raising questions about civil liberties and what, if any, the city is willing to sacrifice in the name of public safety. City, state and federal law enforcement officials have offered various solutions that critics say are merely temporary, likening them to putting band-aids on a wound that hasn’t fully healed.

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Michael Harrison, former president, said: “I was part of those conversations when we were looking to create a very robust security package, including metal detectors and infrared technology that could alert if there was something metallic in someone’s clothing – it didn’t… “None of that ever happens.” of the New Orleans Police who later became Commissioner of Baltimore. “There are ways to prevent vehicular attacks. There is no way yet to prevent people from walking down Bourbon Street and doing bad things.

Taxi driver Judy “Cajun Queen” Boudreau, 65, said Bourbon Street has always embodied the laissez-faire charm of New Orleans, and she’s not sure if the city has the will to shore up its lax security.

“We’re an obvious target. They know we have holes, they know we’re all pushing, and they also know our vibe is ‘Laissez les bons temps rouler,'” she said, invoking the famous Cajun French proverb that means, “Let the good times roll.” “I think it can be balanced, I really do.”

First responders and law enforcement deal with a range of emergencies, from putting out fires to rescuing people in cardiac arrest, said Andrew Monteverde, associate vice president of the New Orleans Firefighters Association. He added that the more limited resources are allocated to one part of the city, the less there is to deal with it elsewhere.

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“Can you make the French Quarter so safe you can’t even spit on the sidewalk?” He said. “Maybe, but then what would you trade?”

At The Beach on Bourbon Street, where workers screen clubgoers at every entrance with portable metal detectors, general manager Woody Ryder has become accustomed to frequent shootings after working there for seven years. “There are crazy people out there,” he said.

But the latest attack made him feel uncomfortable. Rader and his staff are still recovering from witnessing what he and others likened to a “war zone.”

“The city has really failed us,” he said. “I’m hesitant as soon as I head down Bourbon Street.”

___ Mustan reported from New York, and Klein reported from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Associated Press correspondent Michael Konzelman in Washington contributed.

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