After the deadly truck ramming attack on New Orleans’s Bourbon Street early on New Year’s Day, local police said they had intentionally left down a hydraulic barrier meant to prevent such violence because it had a history of malfunctioning – prompting the blockade’s manufacturer to contact the city with an urgent offer of free inspection and maintenance, according to recently obtained emails.
“We would like to bring out a technician for no charge in order to inspect all the Delta Scientific barriers in New Orleans and ensure they are functional and offer any solutions for maintenance or repairs needed,” Dianne Kennedy, the company’s assistant to general counsel and manager of contracts, wrote to the office of the New Orleans mayor, LaToya Cantrell.
Nine days after the attack had killed 14 victims while injuring nearly 60 others, Kennedy’s email added: “We reached out several times to the police superintendent’s office without response.”
LeJon Roberts, the police commander in charge of patrolling Bourbon Street and the surrounding French Quarter neighborhood, replied to Kennedy in a little more than an hour, requesting “a call at [the] earliest convenience regarding servicing” the barrier in question as well as others like it in the agency’s possession.
Delta Scientific’s president, Keith Bobrosky, recently said that call indeed took place, and, during it, the company again reiterated its desire for an inspection. But evidently, nothing came of that lone conversation between the two sides. “We’ve not been down there to inspect,” Bobrosky said on Monday, nearly two months after the terror attack and the police’s claims of a faulty barrier.
“We would still like to come inspect to see if what is being alleged regarding the word ‘malfunction’ being used in the media checks out,” Bobrosky said. “We would like to see if we can confirm it, deny it or learn from it.”
City officials did not respond to a request for comment on Bobrosky’s remarks or the exchange between Kennedy and Roberts, a copy of which the Guardian received through a public records request. Police declined to comment, citing various investigations into the attack as well as pending litigation from injured victims or families of the slain who accuse the city of failing to adequately protect New Year’s revelers on Bourbon Street.
The stilted dialogue between New Orleans officials and Delta Scientific nonetheless raises questions about whether the police brass may have been providing themselves political cover by suggesting that they left down an importantly positioned anti-car ramming barrier known as an MP5000 because it was unreliable and risked becoming an impediment to emergency crews.
The Delta Scientific MP5000 is designed to be raised and lowered in a handful of seconds. It was among three types of barriers meant to stop motorists from purposely targeting crowds that were missing in action the day a sympathizer of the Islamic State terror group drove a pickup truck into more than 70 people celebrating New Year’s Day on Bourbon Street.
All of the barriers had been acquired in 2017 by the administration of Cantrell’s mayoral predecessor, Mitch Landrieu, as part of a $40m public safety package implemented as a countermeasure to deadly car rammings aimed at crowds in Nice, Berlin, London, New York and Barcelona.
Furthermore, in early December, a joint intelligence bulletin from federal law enforcement and counter-terrorism officials warned US officials about online materials suggesting an increased threat from lone attackers targeting winter celebrations. Some of those officials later distributed a note urging a state of alert after a 20 December vehicle ramming attack at a Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany, killed six people – including a nine-year-old boy – while wounding more than 300 others.
Yet city officials said one type of those barriers – road-blocking, cylindrical columns known as bollards – were not up on Bourbon Street at the time of the attack because they were being replaced after being worn down by the rigors of one of the world’s hardest-partying thoroughfares.
Other barricades known as Archer barriers were kept in storage because city officials believed they consumed too much time and police manpower to deploy, though they are designed to be moved in and out of position quickly.
Finally, as she later told the New Orleans city council, local police superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick said the department left an MP5000 stationed at the foot of Bourbon Street in its down position on purpose, vaguely citing “malfunction problems”. Other officials had also said they feared that particular MP5000 – one of multiple units acquired by the city – would get stuck upright and cut off first responders from what is essentially the beginning of Bourbon Street in case of an emergency.
Surveillance video of the attack showed a former US military member who was sympathetic to the Islamic State terror group’s cause drive directly through and over the gap left by the open barrier, allowing him to kill and maim victims with a pickup truck before he crashed and police killed him in a shootout.
New Orleans officials subsequently hired the former New York and Los Angeles police chief William Bratton to review as well as fortify its security plans in advance of its safely hosting the NFL’s 9 February Super Bowl. Bratton was hired to do the same for New Orleans’s celebration of Carnival, culminating in Mardi Gras on 4 March.
Beside saying “it was not very committal”, Bobrosky declined to delve into specifics about the single telephone conversation he recounted Delta Scientific having with Kirkpatrick’s department about maintenance and the allegations of a malfunctioning MP5000.
Generally speaking, Bobrosky said the MP5000s can perform “dozens, if not hundreds, of cycles” on a single battery pack. But the battery pack needs to be recharged, and the hydraulic fluid which allows the barrier to be moved up and down must be kept at an adequate level for it to work as intended.
Fluid leakage that would meaningfully affect the barriers’ performance would be unmissable, Bobrosky said. “You would have a very visible amount of oil,” he said.
Even if someone fails to properly maintain an MP5000, Bobrosky continued, it has built-in backup systems allowing it to be operated without power.
“Those backup systems can lower a unit for emergency vehicles even with total system failure,” he said. “So I just want it to be known that it is an incredibly robust [product] that we have a lot of confidence in. And that is why we would like to come” see what may have gone on in New Orleans.
