Lowered barriers don’t mean New Orleans officials coordinated with attacker | Fact check
The claim: Lowered barriers on Bourbon Street show New Orleans officials coordinated with attacker
A Jan. 1 Facebook post (direct link, archive link) makes a claim about the New Year’s Day vehicle attack in New Orleans.
"Bourbon street barriers were down," reads the post. "Who inside the New Orleans Govt made this decision in coordination with the ISIS sympathizer driving the truck?"
It was shared more than 40 times in 12 days. Similar posts were shared on Facebook and X, including an X post from the conservative account Libs of TikTok, which was reposted more than 7,000 times in eight days.
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Our rating: False
New Orleans police said barriers weren't used for the New Year's festivities because they often malfunctioned and some were being replaced. Instead, police publicly announced that other security measures were in place for this year's events.
New Orleans police didn’t use barriers because they often malfunctioned
In the early morning hours of New Year’s Day, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a 42-year-old military veteran from Houston, crashed a rented pickup truck into pedestrians on Bourbon Street near Canal Street, killing 15 people and injuring at least 30 more. Police fatally shot Jabbar after he opened fire on officers.
Bourbon Street in recent years has had two different types of barriers – wedges, which are ramps that rise to block the street, and bollards, which are vertical posts that come up out of the pavement.
An image published by NOLA.com in 2017 shows Bourbon Street with a type of portable steel wedge that can be raised to block traffic and lowered to allow it to pass. The Guardian reported the attacker drove over a wedge that was in the closed position.
The wedge barriers weren't used on New Year’s because they frequently malfunction, New Orleans Police Capt. LeJon Roberts, the commander of the police district that includes the French Quarter, told NOLA.com.
New Orleans Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick gave a similar explanation at a Jan. 1 press conference, when she said, “The wedges that you see out there as well, we knew that that had malfunction problems. And I want you to understand, let’s say we put the wedge up and it got stuck. There is no way that an ambulance could get in or out, people couldn’t get in and out, so we knew that these were malfunction(ing).”
However, NOLA.com reported wedge barriers were raised in the aftermath of the attack. The New Orleans Police Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Paste BN.
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In November, the city’s public works department began removing and replacing the vertical bollards that blocked both sides of Bourbon Street intersections, with the expectation that work would be completed before the city hosts Super Bowl LIX on Feb. 9, as Paste BN previously reported.
"Bollards were not up because they are near completion, with the expectation of being completed by Super Bowl – way before Super Bowl," New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell said during the Jan. 1 press conference.
The old bollards were installed in 2017 as part of a $40 million security plan for the area, but they began to malfunction shortly after being installed.
"The New Orleans Police Department deemed them inefficient because they did not operate the way that they were intended to do," Cantrell said.
Instead, other security measures, including other barriers, patrol vehicles and officers, were in place on Bourbon Street when the attack happened. The department’s security plan for New Year’s included a “strong presence of marked and unmarked police vehicles, as well as officers on foot, bike and horseback,” Kirkpatrick said in a Dec. 30, 2024, news release.
Paste BN reached out to the social media user who shared the post for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
Reuters fact-checked a similar claim.
Our fact-check sources
- NOLA.com, Feb. 23, 2017, Bourbon Street safety barriers: Have you seen them? Here's how they work
- NOLA.com, Jan. 7, Attacker drove down 3 blocks of Bourbon Street with no barriers. How did that happen?
- NOLA.com, Jan. 4, New barriers coming to Bourbon Street not designed to stop truck attacks like on New Year's Day
- City of New Orleans, Jan. 1, Bourbon Street Incident Press Conference 1-1-25
- City of New Orleans, accessed Jan. 10, Bourbon Street Bollard Assessment & Replacement Project
- New Orleans Police Department, Dec. 30, 2024, NOPD Announces Safety and Security Plans for New Year’s Festivities, Allstate Sugar Bowl Events
- Paste BN, Jan. 1, New Orleans security barriers were being replaced prior to deadly attack, officials say
- The Guardian, Jan. 3, ‘Worst-case scenario’: when needed most, New Orleans barriers were missing in action
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