WWL Louisiana obtained surveillance video from ProjectNOLA that shows just how often the barriers are moved.
NEW ORLEANS — The New Orleans Police Department is shifting responsibility for setting up vehicle barriers on Bourbon Street to the company that supplies them, following renewed concerns about whether the barriers provide adequate protection.
The steel barriers were installed earlier this year to prevent a repeat of the deadly New Year’s morning attack, when a driver rammed into crowds on Bourbon Street, killing 14 and injuring another 57 revelers. But videos in recent weeks have shown pedestrians easily pushing the barriers aside and even allowing cars to pass through, raising questions about whether the city is any safer.
WWL Louisiana used video surveillance provided by the privately operated ProjectNOLA crime camera network to show how commonly the barriers are moved after the NOPD deploys them to create a pedestrian-only promenade.
This reporter showed some of the videos to the New Orleans Police Department’s 8th District commander, Capt. Sam Palumbo, including one where I was able to push the barrier out of the way immediately after NOPD officers used tools to deploy them.
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Palumbo told the City Council at a hearing on Tuesday that the barrier supplier, TCP Security Solutions, will now be responsible for putting them in place each evening and reopening them in the morning. The French Quarter Management District has agreed to cover the additional labor costs, though the exact amount has not been disclosed.
A new contract is in the works to formalize the change, Palumbo told the council.
WWL Louisiana reported last week that the barriers were routinely left open or pushed back to allow vehicle access, undermining their purpose. That raised concerns from public safety groups, including the New Orleans Police and Justice Foundation, which helped raise money to assess security in the French Quarter after the New Year’s terror attack.
TCP’s SecureGuard barriers are intended to block vehicles at night and during peak tourist times when thousands of revelers pack Bourbon Street. They are crash-rated to stop hostile vehicles, but they sit on wheels so police officers can swing them open quickly in case of emergencies. When the police deploy them, they use a ratchet to raise the wheels and place the barriers flush on the street, but they do not use steel pins that are chained to some of the barriers and are designed to anchor them in place.
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There are no corresponding holes in the street for inserting the anchor pins, so they are either missing entirely or are stored on the sides of the barriers.
Still, Palumbo said the barriers were not supposed to move so easily when the wheels are up and blamed misuse and neglect.
“Bourbon Street is unique. What we have is we have people that come on Bourbon, they use those barriers as seats. Things get spilled into them. Debris gets put into them, so what we’re trying to make sure is that they’re operating at full capacity. When they are operating at full capacity, this should not be an issue,” he said.
He said TCP Security Solutions came to inspect the barriers last Tuesday, and they were scheduled for service to clean them. But this past weekend, a Bourbon Street bouncer posted another video showing someone shifting a barrier so a car could drive into the entertainment district around 2 a.m. Sunday.
Since Mardi Gras, when a state contract to supply the barriers ended, the city has been paying $28,800 a week to rent the barriers.
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