NO must get serious about vehicle terror attacks

It’s worse than was thought: New Orleans officials didn’t even plan to have a serious security system in place to prevent a terrorist attack such as the one inflicted upon the Vieux Carré early last Wednesday, providing yet another indictment of the unserious Democrat Mayor LaToya Cantrell and of incuriousness of city councilors who seemed to have other priorities.

This space recently criticized Cantrell and city councilors for poor planning concerning the security bollard functioning on Bourbon Street that had a presumed upgrade not in place for, at the very least, college football bowl season and New Year’s Eve. It assumed that the replacement system would have been one designed to thwart a heavy vehicle at middling speed from crashing through and careening down Bourbon during a heavy of heavy pedestrian use, such as during New Year’s Eve and into the wee hours after in this particular instance.

Instead, it seemed the contemplated system the installment of which began in the middle of football season is not designed with security in mind, but rather with slow-speed typical vehicle encounters more like from inattentive or drunk driving, rather than intentional attempts to kill as many people as possible. Perhaps this is why elected officials after the incident played down the fact that the system had yet to be installed (with its target completion date early February to stand up before the Super Bowl and Carnival) in saying it couldn’t have prevented such an attack.

Thus, it seems not just an error in implementation that cost lives, but an error in concept and planning. It seems inconceivable that if you were going to all the trouble to replace an older system unreliable in stopping vehicle attacks that you wouldn’t put in place a more reliable system instead of being left with more of the same – unless it were a matter of cost and policy decisions were made that money was better spent on other low priority to questionable purposes.

Maybe like Cantrell potentially defrauding taxpayers for personal gain? Or her possibly accepting bribery to cut deals on city inspections? Free wireless for all? A city employee minimum wage hiking costs? A rental registry driving costs up for landlords to the point it prompts the city to spend on affordable housing? And on and on it goes.

City policy-makers need to make an adjustment now, finding the money to put higher-grade bollards in place and doing that as soon as possible, if not as part of the upgrade. As well, they should consider decreasing vehicle access to Bourbon Street, although a pedestrian-only zone beyond a few blocks of that street might pose too many problems, as the blocks closest to Canal Street have few residents but further down it and other parallel and cross streets have relatively high concentrations of residents.

Security needs to go beyond accidents and consider intentional actions. City elected officials must reject the indifference they showed prior to the event and plan and execute accordingly.