A driver plowed through a crowded Bourbon Street on New Year’s Day, killing 14 and injuring dozens. Experts urge ramp-up of police and safety measures after attack.
GREENSBORO, N.C. — A deadly attack around 3:15 in New Orleans on New Year’s Day has the city reeling and the nation looking for answers. Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, went barreling through a crowded Bourbon Street in New Orleans leaving 14 dead and dozens hurt.
“When you have low-tech methods of attack, coupled with large gatherings of people the recipe can be disastrous,” said Kyle Loven, a former FBI agent.
New Orleans is supposed to have steel bollards in place to keep drivers out when needed. However, the city is still in the process of replacing them.
Instead, that night, they relied on police cars blocking the road but unfortunately, that didn’t stop the suspect.
“Unfortunately, when you have a determined assailant like the person involved here, they’re gonna find a way to defeat those types of rudimentary, deterrents that were in place,” Loven said.
Loven said these attacks are hard for police to prevent, especially in cities with narrow, crowded streets like New Orleans, making them a prime target.
“I know that a lot of these types of actors, yes, they’re looking for the high profile targets but they’re also looking for soft targets,” Loven said. “And I think New Orleans, with the number of visitors it has on, quite frankly, on a daily basis. There are people in the French Quarter down Bourbon Street on a daily and nightly basis. I wasn’t surprised that that type of crowd would be attractive to somebody like this.”
Loven expects security in New Orleans to increase dramatically. With the Super Bowl and Mardi Gras approaching, he said police will be everywhere to prevent a repeat of what will be remembered as a tragic New Year’s.
“There has to be an overwhelming and significant police presence, not only to maintain security but to assure the visitors who come to New Orleans that this is indeed a safe city. So I think it will be incumbent upon city officials, the police department. To demonstrate that overwhelming police presence within the area when, when thousands of visitors flock to the city for these events,” Loven said.
The questions swirling behind who Jabbar was and what his motive was remain unclear. Police did find an ISIS flag attached to the truck he used in the deadly attack and several social media posts from Jabbar pledging his support to the international terrorist group.
“I’m a little surprised. I would like to know what journey. He took if he was radicalized, how he was able to become radicalized so quickly. It strikes me that he was, you know, he was a serviceman, served the country. It seems like he had a very uneventful upbringing, a very uneventful life up until just recently,” Loven said. “So law enforcement officials will be looking at, you know, at the people that he associated with. They’re going to be looking at his personal situation. Did he have grievances? Did he have other events going on in his life which caused him to get into a downward spiral? And so all of that needs to be looked at. They’ll piece together a profile of his life to determine what occurred here. Why did this person do what he did?”
Also on the forefront of law enforcement’s minds are plans moving forward. Loven said after every tragic terrorist attack like this one there’s an overwhelming number of police patrolling areas and making sure there are no bombs or other traps left behind.
“What will have to happen going forward is law enforcement will need to plan for the worst-case scenario,” Loven said. “‘What may happen or what potential criminals might want to do if we had a major event?’ We try to anticipate that so that we can set up measures to defeat those plans. And so I think law enforcement is going to have to get more imaginative, more creative when it comes to thinking about what the possible threats may be in the next event.”
A City of Greensboro spokesperson told WFMY that, for months now, the city has been looking into buying steel bollards to protect against tragic attacks just like this one. While there’s nothing official yet, they are digging into how much it would cost.
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