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

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The second-guessing began before the bodies had been cleared from the debris of the deadly Bourbon Street truck attack.

A law firm signed up survivors of what it called a “predictable and preventable” tragedy. Politicians parried blame for the latest mass-casualty event in New Orleans’ infamous adult playground. And investigations targeted the ill-fated removal of the street's bollards, steel columns designed to restrict vehicle access.

But as the city seeks to recover and beefs up security ahead of next month's Super Bowl and Carnival season, law enforcement and community leaders are confronting an existential question as old as the entertainment district: Can Bourbon Street be protected in a way that preserves its unique, round-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,” said Rafael Goyeneche, a former prosecutor who is president of the Metropolitan Crime Commission watchdog group.

“If we try to make New Orleans as secure as an airport, people aren't going to like it,” he said. “This isn’t Disney World.”

Shock and grief have given way to finger-pointing over whether additional security could have stopped — or mitigated — the Islamic State group-inspired attack, which killed 14 people when Shamsud-Din Jabbar drove a pickup through 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 neighborhood into a state park.

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

“It’s just too wide open. It’s too trustworthy down here,” said Bryan Casey, 53, a native New Orleanian who has worked on Bourbon Street since the late 1990s and waits tables at Galatoire’s, an upscale restaurant that opened in 1905. Casey and his colleagues wiped blood off the wall after the attack as bodies lay mangled in front of the establishment.

Bourbon Street should have been made into a pedestrian mall long ago, Casey said: “There’s people watching and they’re going to get you, so you got to be careful.”

Much of the immediate focus has centered on the absence of the bollards, which had stopped working reliably and were being replaced ahead of the Super Bowl.

City leaders have been criticized for the timing of that project and failing to implement a suitable replacement during their repair. A lawsuit filed Thursday on behalf of victims alleged the city “had years of opportunities” to patch up vulnerabilities.

But a half dozen current and former law enforcement officials in Louisiana described the bollard issue as a red herring, saying that even if they had been functioning they may not have prevented the attack given how hell-bent Jabbar appeared on creating carnage.

The broader safety conundrum is more complex, they said, given the quarter's dense, alcohol-fueled crowds and structural challenges inherent to an early 18th-century neighborhood built for horse-drawn buggies. Policing here is even more complicated in a city with notoriously high crime, a chronic shortage of officers and a new state law allowing permit-less concealed carry of firearms.

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

“A lot of people in public safety don’t want to talk about it, but we just can’t guarantee that everybody going to the French Quarter is going to be safe,” Jones said. “There’s a tradeoff here, and we’ve never, ever, found that balance.”

The city’s newly hired 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 city police to bolster 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 the flavor of it, the excitement of it and the nature of it,” Bratton said at a news conference this week. “To develop security protocols that don’t become so intrusive, so disruptive.”

The New Year's attack was far from the first deadly vehicle incident on Bourbon Street.

In 1972, one person died and 18 were injured when a teenager fleeing police in a stolen car crashed through metal barricades and sped down the thoroughfare at 70 mph (about 113 kph). Ten years later a man smashed through steel barricades and careened down nearly seven blocks, injuring at least 11. And in 1995, an intoxicated 63-year-old man drove a beer van through a crowd attending a St. Patrick’s Day parade, killing one and injuring 38.

More recent Bourbon Street tragedies have involved gun violence, including multiple fatal shootings last year. In 2014, a mass shooting killed a 21-year-old woman and wounded nine others, including a bystander shot through her cheek. Two years later a person was killed and nine others were wounded in a shooting.

Many of those incidents prompted similar calls for change and accountability, raising questions about civil liberties and what, if anything, the city is willing to sacrifice in the name of public safety. City, state and federal law enforcement officials have offered varying solutions that critics have said were mere stopgaps, likening them to putting Band-Aids on a wound that has never quite healed.

“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 something metal was in someone's clothing — none of that ever materialized,” said Michael Harrison, a former head of New Orleans police who later became commissioner in Baltimore. “There are ways to prevent ramming attacks. There’s not yet a way to prevent people from walking on Bourbon Street and doing bad things.”

Pedicab driver Jody “Cajun Queen” Boudreaux, 65, said Bourbon Street has always embodied New Orleans' laissez-faire charm and she is not sure whether the city has the will to shore up its lax security.

“We’re a target, clearly. They know we have holes, they know we are all scrambling and they also know that our vibe is ‘Laissez les bons temps rouler’” she said, invoking the famous Cajun French saying that means, “Let the good times roll.” “I think it can be balanced, I truly do.”

Andrew Monteverde, co-vice president of the New Orleans Firefighters Association, said first responders and law enforcement deal with a raft of emergencies, from extinguishing fires to saving people in cardiac arrest. The more that limited resources are dedicated to one part of the city, he added, the less is available to deal for elsewhere.

“Could you possibly make the French Quarter so secure that you couldn’t even spit on the sidewalk?” he said. “Maybe, but then what would you trade off?”

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

But the recent attack has made him uneasy. Ryder and his staff are still recovering from witnessing what he and others likened to a “war zone.”

“The city has already failed us,” he said. “I’m hesitant as soon as I turn on Bourbon Street.”

___ Mustian reported from New York, and Cline from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Associated Press reporter Michael Kunzelman in Washington contributed.