Vehicle Ramming Attacks in Public Spaces: Isn't Anyone Serious About Defense?

I don't wish to be too hard on the authorities in Magdeburg, Germany, and their costly durcheinanderbringen that left their Christmas market vulnerable to a vehicle ramming attack last month. Our own authorities in New Orleans did exactly the same stupid thing, and that one cost ten lives. The photo above is of the aftermath on Bourbon Street.  

There is quite the cultural difference between central Germany and New Orleans, of course. For instance, what German city would ever adopt the motto "Let the Good Times Roll?" It's easier for me to understand a huge security screw-up in New Orleans. 

"New Orleans resembles Genoa or Marseilles, or Beirut or the Egyptian Alexandria more than it does New York, although all seaports resemble one another more than they can resemble any place in the interior. Like Havana and Port-au-Prince, New Orleans is within the orbit of a Hellenistic world that never touched the North Atlantic. The Mediterranean, Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico form a homogeneous, though interrupted, sea." A. J. Liebling, THE EARL OF LOUISIANA

Did you ever read Confederacy of Dunces? That above quote is from the foreword. Totally true. New Orleans is the only place in North America - which includes Mexico, don't forget - where I've ever felt I needed a visa. 

A news report on yesterday's New Orleans attack is here: 

A set of security barriers that were installed in 2017 to prevent terrorist attacks along Bourbon Street were being replaced when a driver barreled down the city’s most famous thoroughfare hours into the New Year on Wednesday, killing 10 and injuring dozens. 

The removable stainless-steel bollards are designed to be securely locked at each crosswalk along Bourbon Street between Canal and St. Ann streets, according to Mayor LaToya Cantrell's administration. The attack occurred near the intersection of Bourbon and Iberville streets. 

New Orleans Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick said the suspect drove “at a very fast pace” down Bourbon Street about 3:15 a.m., striking dozens, and then shot at first responders after crashing. Two officers were struck and are in stable condition. The suspect, too, was shot and has died. The FBI is investigating the incident as a terrorist attack. 

The bollard project began in November and was scheduled to last three months. It involves removing and replacing sections of road to take out the existing bollards. A city press release on Tuesday night noted the project was ongoing, but did not provide details of work done thus far.

The old barriers never worked too well, said Bob Simms, who until recently oversaw security initiatives for the French Quarter Management District. 

'They were very ineffective. The track was always full of crap; beads and doubloons and God knows what else. Not the best idea,” Simms said. “Eventually everybody realized the need to replace them. They’re in the process of doing that, but the new ones are not yet operational.” 

Simms said the old barrier at the crosswalk of Canal and Bourbon streets was removed a few weeks ago. Equipment for a replacement is in place, he said. 

"They're doing it in time for the Super Bowl," Simms said. "It's ironic in a way." 

-- snip -- 

Simms said preventing the kind of carnage that took place early Wednesday was "exactly what [the bollards were] built for." 

The bollards were put in place before NBA All-Star Game in 2017. The plan was partly a reaction to the July 2016 mass murder in Nice, France, when a terrorist used a truck as a weapon to plow into a Bastille Day crowd, killing 86 and injuring hundreds more. A few months later a copycat killed 12 shoppers in a Berlin Christmas market. 

That's a major screw-up in any language. 

The still-fairly-serious press is now paying attention, and today the NYT has an article about the rising threat of vehicle ramming attacks, and it's NOT barricaded behind a paywall, so they must really want you to read it. 

You'll find there links to an FBI handout and also a British academic journal article from 2019, both about the spectacularly obvious tactic of vehicle ramming. In short, ramming attacks have left a death toll that exceeds that of almost any vehicle bomb attack. 

The NYT article ends with these two last paragraphs:

“The problem in the most recent case [in Germany] is that the perpetrator used a lane reserved for ambulances,” said Nicolas Stockhammer, a professor of security studies at Danube University in Krems, Austria. “He approached the area through a side where there was no protection.”

The city of New Orleans was upgrading security bollards along a section of Bourbon Street in the area where the attack occurred, according to its website. The city’s police superintendent said at a news conference that the perpetrator “went around our barricades” to conduct the attack.

So, it appears that our best intellectual talent in security studies and our foremost municipal police leaderships are capable of appreciating the threat of vehicle ramming attacks. 

That's good. But the NYT ends the matter there. It doesn't take the next step and ask our responsible officials why those attacks have been succeeding. 

The answer to that question is BECAUSE YOU DID'NT BLOCK VEHICLE ACCESS TO YOUR CITIES' MOST ATTRACTIVE TARGETS, that's why. You left gaps open and unprotected which the attackers could exploit. 

Are you not as serious about defense as your attackers are about offense? 

It's all the more aggravating that our responsible officials already know how to counter those attacks, since they know our federal government has done just that for decades around its domestic and overseas buildings. They know better but they did a half-assed job anyway. 

Maybe we citizens and voters might now ask those responsible officials why they have been derelict in their basic duty of public safety.