NEW ORLEANS — The second-guessing started earlier than the our bodies had been cleared from the particles of the lethal Bourbon Avenue truck assault.
A legislation agency signed up survivors of what it referred to as a “predictable and preventable” tragedy. Politicians parried blame for the newest mass-casualty occasion in New Orleans’ notorious grownup playground. And investigations focused the ill-fated removing of the road’s bollards, metal columns designed to limit car entry.
However as the town seeks to recuperate and beefs up safety forward of subsequent month’s Tremendous Bowl and Carnival season, legislation enforcement and group leaders are confronting an existential query as outdated because the leisure district: Can Bourbon Avenue be protected in a manner that preserves its distinctive, around-the-clock revelry?
“Once we start to hear 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 an appetite for all that,” mentioned Rafael Goyeneche, a former prosecutor who’s president of the Metropolitan Crime Fee watchdog group.
“If we try to make New Orleans as secure as an airport, people aren’t going to like it,” he mentioned. “This isn’t Disney World.”
Shock and grief have given option to finger-pointing over whether or not extra safety might have stopped — or mitigated — the Islamic State group-inspired assault on Jan. 1, which killed 14 folks when Shamsud-Din Jabbar drove a pickup by way of a New 12 months’s crowd.
New safety proposals
Within the tough days since, proposals for brand new security measures have ranged from banning vehicular visitors within the French Quarter to turning the historic neighborhood right into a state park.
Many locals who depend upon tourism agree that one thing has to provide.
“It’s just too wide open. It’s too trustworthy down here,” mentioned Bryan Casey, 53, a local New Orleanian who has labored on Bourbon Avenue for the reason that late Nineties and waits tables at Galatoire’s, an upscale restaurant that opened in 1905. Casey and his colleagues wiped blood off the wall after the assault as our bodies lay mangled in entrance of the institution.
Bourbon Avenue ought to have been made right into a pedestrian mall way back, Casey mentioned: “There’s people watching and they’re going to get you, so you got to be careful.”
A lot of the fast focus has centered on the absence of the bollards, which had stopped working reliably and had been being changed forward of the Tremendous Bowl.
Metropolis leaders have been criticized for the timing of that venture and failing to implement an appropriate substitute throughout their restore. A lawsuit filed Thursday on behalf of victims alleged the town “had years of opportunities” to patch up vulnerabilities.
However a half dozen present and former legislation enforcement officers in Louisiana described the bollard subject as a pink herring, saying that even when that they had been functioning, they might not have prevented the assault given how hell-bent Jabbar appeared on creating carnage.