‘Back injuries' and ‘a tripping hazard': New Orleans officials still resisting anti-ramming barriers after deadly vehicle attack

The Guardian

28-02-2025

At least some public safety officials in New Orleans evidently remain skeptical of easily deployable, 700lb steel barriers designed to prevent intentional vehicle ramming attacks – even after one carried out on the city's most famous street on New Year's Day killed 14 people and injured 67 others, according to a trove of government emails obtained by the Guardian.
Received through a public records request, the emails detail how the inventor of so-called Archer barriers – which the city had bought but kept in storage on the day of the deadly Bourbon Street attack – encountered a measure of resistance when he traveled to New Orleans with his company of his own volition to train local authorities on how to expeditiously deploy the barricades.
Police officers 'were not thrilled with the notion that they were responsible for deploying and breaking down the barriers' whenever they were going to be used, a process that on Bourbon Street could be completed in 20 minutes, Archer creator Peter Whitford wrote in an email to New Orleans' municipal director of homeland security and emergency preparedness, Collin Arnold.
'The concern was about back injuries and police work versus public works [employees] doing the work,' Whitford wrote in the message, sent 12 days after the attack. Alluding to longstanding staffing shortages at the New Orleans police department, one of the officers 'expressed that this was not part of their job description, and if someone got injured then they would be down a person, and there is not enough resources to back fill'.
Meanwhile, at another point, Arnold received an email from New Orleans' public safety and homeland security director, retired high-ranking police commander John Thomas, which described the Archer barriers from Whitford's Meridian Rapid Defense Group as 'very dangerous'.
The email said the barriers pose 'a tripping hazard' and have 'sharp edges' that could hurt anyone pushed into them. The message also suggested the Archer barriers had little practical use if they are not 'movable quickly for emergencies' – which they are – and had to be permanently left in place upon being deployed, which they are not.
Ultimately, as the city beefed up crowd security ahead of hosting the NFL's Super Bowl on 9 February and then prepared to host its annual celebration of Carnival culminating in Mardi Gras on 4 March, New Orleans officials have used their Archer barriers in certain spots rather than stowing them away. Yet an announced agreement for the barriers to shield large sections of New Orleans' main Mardi Gras parade route was later scuttled, Whitford said in a recent interview.
Police officials declined to comment on the emails related to the Archer barriers, citing various investigations into the Bourbon Street attack as well as pending litigation from injured victims or families of the slain who have accused the city of failing to adequately protect New Year's revelers.
But Whitford faulted a disagreement over the division of labor for the New Orleans government's palpable skepticism to a type of barrier that on New Year's Day 2024 prevented a woman with a history of mental illness from plowing a car into a crowd of spectators at the Rose Parade in Pasadena, California, where the Meridian firm is based.
'Where the benefit for everyone would be is police should be doing police work, fire should be doing fire work and emergency services should be providing emergency services,' Whitford said. 'And I think public works or the private sector should be responsible for putting out equipment' like the Archer barriers.
Spokespeople for New Orleans mayor LaToya Cantrell's administration did not respond to a request for comment. The administration ostensibly oversees a municipal government division tasked with 'providing physical security at … events', and it has the authority to enter into arrangements with private service providers.
New Orleans acquired 41 Archer barriers in 2017 under the administration of Cantrell's mayoral predecessor, Mitch Landrieu, as part of a $40m public safety package implemented as a countermeasure to deadly car rammings aimed at crowds in Nice, Berlin, London, New York and Barcelona.
Nonetheless, when crowds descended on Bourbon Street to celebrate the beginning of 2025 less than two weeks after a deadly truck attack at a German Christmas market, New Orleans officials left their Archer barriers stowed away. Officials also left down two other kinds of blockades meant to protect crowds from motorists meaning them harm – road-blocking, cylindrical bollards and a wedge barrier that can be hydraulically raised or lowered in seconds.
City officials had varied explanations when confronted after a former US military member sympathetic to the Islamic State (IS) terror group's cause drove a pickup truck up three blocks of Bourbon Street, killing or injuring more than 70 people before he crashed and was killed in a shootout with police.
They said the bollards needed repairs after being worn down by the rigors of one of the world's most zealously festive thoroughfares. The wedge barrier allegedly had a history of malfunctioning, though the manufacturer later said the city essentially ignored its offer to inspect and repair the product if necessary.
As for the Archer barriers, six days after the attack, Arnold went on a local radio station and conceded that they are effective at tilting back if struck by a motorist, getting 'tangled under the vehicle and dig[ging] into the street and … [doing] a massive amount of damage'.
He complained, however, that 'moving them takes significant effort that must be thought of a couple of days before'.
'And once they're deployed, moving them takes usually two to three people,' he added.
Two days after Arnold's remarks, the president of an independent government watchdog group sent an email to LeJon Roberts, the New Orleans police commander in charge of officers patrolling Bourbon Street and the surrounding French Quarter neighborhood.
The email from the president of the New Orleans metropolitan crime commission, Rafael Goyeneche, contained a link to a YouTube video which showed a woman with gray hair effortlessly and single-handedly pushing and pulling an Archer barrier, using equipment from Meridian allowing one to assemble what is essentially a hand dolly cart.
'Do you have access [to] these?' Goyeneche wrote.
Roberts replied: 'The two we have are inoperable due to damage.' The reply conspicuously did not say when police realized they were broken – or if they took steps to either repair or replace them.
Asked for comment on that exchange, Goyeneche said he recalled trading emails with Roberts but declined to elaborate much. He did say he got the impression that this equipment 'must have been put away and forgotten about' – and that he thought it was unusual this 'type of stuff … [would be] the police department's responsibility'.
Meanwhile, Whitford described initially having repeated telephone calls to various city officials unreturned after the attack. He eventually got through to Arnold, who on 9 January informed Cantrell and other members of her staff that Meridian would come to town to update the city's supply of Archers.
The company would also 'set them up appropriately and provide training' to police, Arnold wrote.
It was in the ensuing days when Whitford encountered officers' concerns about possible back injuries and musings about whether other municipal employees were better suited for the work.
Despite that, during Super Bowl week and in advance of Carnival, Meridian's barriers have been seen along Bourbon Street and at other spots in the French Quarter. That included the city's Jackson Square and nearby St Louis cathedral, where light shows were projected on the building's exterior. They were also seen erected outside New Orleans' Saenger Theater, which hosted the NFL Honors ceremony recognizing the league's best from the preceding season.
Meridian then announced that the city had agreed to rent about 900 additional barriers to protect the city's traditional Mardi Gras parade route largely along its iconic St Charles Avenue in time for when the peak of the festive season kicked off on 21 February. Emails showed the arrangement would cost the city $200 a barrier for each day of parades, with any Meridian staffers hired to oversee specific access points costing a daily fee of $750.
Whitford said the city expressed a willingness to pay for the arrangement. But a disagreement over whether to completely ban vehicular traffic along the route at certain times on days with parades – rather than only on the side of the street used by the floats and marching units – prompted Meridian and New Orleans officials to effectively cancel the agreement.
After hiring former New York and Los Angeles police chief William Bratton to harden its security plans for the Super Bowl and Mardi Gras, city officials have lined the side of St Charles open to motorists ahead of parades with water-filled barricades designed to serve as impediments that drivers must slow down to get around. The barriers are arrayed to create what is known as a 'serpentine' traffic pattern – or, in car racing parlance, a series of chicanes.
Officials have also resorted to lining the St Charles median – or, as New Orleans refers to it, the neutral ground – where many spectators gather early to watch parades with concrete barriers, which can be effective in deflecting sidelong blows from cars.
WWL Louisiana also reported that Cantrell is considering making Bourbon Street exclusively for pedestrians rather than continuing to permit car traffic at times when crowds aren't as dense.
Unlike Archer barriers, Whitford said, neither concrete nor water-filled barricades are certified by the US's homeland security department under a congressional act incentivizing anti-terrorism technology.
Yet Whitford said he was glad the city had implemented those measures at least, when in years past neither were present.
'They have made some improvements in safety – it's reasonable to say that,' Whitford said that. 'For it to be the safest possible, it would be shutting down [the route] entirely.
'And the city is heading in that direction. But they have still made a decision not to make this a pedestrian [only] event; they've made a decision to allow some vehicle traffic.'