Most of Bourbon Street should be closed to cars following New Orleans truck attack, report recommends

Visitors pack Bourbon Street in New Orleans on February 8. A report is recommending that most of Bourbon Street should be closed off to vehicles. Mike Segar/Reuters via CNN Newsource

Most of New Orleans’ Bourbon Street should be closed off to vehicles, creating a permanent pedestrian plaza, a report recommends, three months after a truck plowed into a New Year’s Day crowd, killing 14 people and injuring at least 35.

The tragedy took place in the city’s bustling French Quarter, which had no strong barriers to protect the area from speeding vehicles like that 6,000-pound truck, CNN previously reported.

The report released by the New Orleans Police and Justice Foundation said an “elevated threat environment demands a new security approach for the French Quarter for everyday business operations.”

The mass killing raised questions about how the city secured Bourbon Street and how a heavy-duty truck was able to drive onto one of the most pedestrian-heavy roads in the US.

The report was prepared by global consulting firm Teneo, and the review was carried out by a risk assessment team composed of a group of counterterrorism and police experts who conducted dozens of interviews.

CNN has reached out to the city of New Orleans for comment.

The assessment found Bourbon Street is “extremely vulnerable to a vehicle ramming attack any time of year” and that such attacks remain a persistent security threat. The city’s staffing shortages, inadequate vehicle barriers, along with weak interagency coordination and collaboration has challenged its ability to address “growing threats,” said the report.

The New Orleans Police Department should establish a plan marking the locations of vehicle barriers throughout the city and covering key intersections, while also considering placing “all available metal barriers” throughout the city, the report says.

It also recommends the police department “review its officer placement along the parade route and throughout the French Quarter to ensure that officers are regularly positioned throughout the routes rather than grouping together and leaving several blocks without police personnel.”

Additional officers should be placed at “key locations,” it says, to create a “highly visible show of security and overall sense of safety.”

Trash bins should be removed from parade routes, it continues, due to the risk of a “nefarious actor placing a weapon or IED” along the route.

The attack came after a private security consulting firm warned in a 2019 report that the risk of terrorism in the French Quarter – specifically mass shootings and vehicular attacks – remained “highly possible while moderately probable.”

That 2019 report strongly recommended safety structures known as bollards –– vertical posts that can be anchored in place or move up and down –– be fixed and improved “immediately.”

In addition to the missing sturdy bollards, which were under repair, the city’s portable steel barriers were in the down position during New Year’s celebrations, CNN previously reported.

The attacker, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, visited the city twice in the months prior and used Meta smart glasses to film the street and plan out the attack, according to the FBI.

Jabbar, a 42-year-old Army veteran who had pledged allegiance to ISIS, drove a pickup truck into the crowd just after 3 a.m. and then opened fire, the FBI said. The vehicle ultimately crashed into a cherry picker forklift, and Jabbar was killed in a shootout with police.

Mayor LaToya Cantrell held a news conference Monday to announce public safety measures ahead of the city’s French Quarter Fest, which will begin on Thursday and last through Sunday.

Road closures will be in place throughout the French Quarter, banning vehicles on Bourbon Street, along with several others.

“We are built to host and ready to show the world that we are a welcoming, safe city and open for business,” Cantrell said in a statement.