The deadly New Year’s Day truck attack in New Orleans “would have had a completely different outcome” if city officials had put out 700lb (317kg) barriers that they bought years earlier and have a track record of preventing intentional vehicle rammings, the blockades’ inventor has told the Guardian.
But the city “did not have a full slate of accessories to help move and deploy” those steel Archer barriers quickly in the way they were designed to be – and how authorities elsewhere have managed to do it, Peter Whitford, the chief executive officer of the Meridian Rapid Defense Group, said in an interview.
Though the Archers had stopped a relatively similar ramming attack in California exactly a year earlier, in New Orleans, officials came to regard them as too cumbersome to put out and pick back up, according to prior reporting from the Guardian.
New Orleans emergency preparedness officials therefore stored them away. And they were one of three types of barriers meant to stop motorists from purposely targeting crowds that were missing in action on 1 January when an Islamic State (IS) terror group sympathizer fatally struck 14 people while injuring about 35 others on the city’s famous Bourbon Street.
Whitford late Thursday said the attack and subsequent revelations about why New Orleans chose not to set up its Archers had prompted him and other members of his defense company to travel to the city and personally handle furnishing its public safety establishment with the deployment equipment it evidently lacked.
He described meeting with local police officials to overhaul and hashing out plans to provide training on the equipment as well as maintenance to the barriers in the city’s stock. He did not elaborate, but the Archer barriers New Orleans put out the day after the attack – using equipment and methods not associated with the manufacturer – were covered in rust, cutting a stark contrast with the ones kept in pristine shape in other cities.
Related: ‘Worst-case scenario’: when needed most, New Orleans barriers were missing in action
“It’s disappointing to see that … same pride [elsewhere]… did not take place in the equipment that we sold” to New Orleans, Whitford said. “We’re going to fix that.”
Adding that he wasn’t sure or concerned about whether Meridian would be paid for the work it was doing to help the city government overhaul the way it viewed its Archer barriers, Whitford said: “We’re here to help New Orleans get to the standard that it needs to get to.”
Whitford’s remarks came after New Orleans officials hired former New York and Los Angeles police chief William Bratton to review the city’s security plans and fortify it against future attacks as it prepares to host the NFL’s Super Bowl on 9 February and the annual, citywide Carnival celebrations culminating in Mardi Gras on 4 March.
New Orleans’ city hall has been on the defensive about why the Archers and two other, separate barriers meant to impede intentional vehicle rammings were missing at the entrance to Bourbon Street when the attack occurred. The city’s government had acquired all of them under former mayor Mitch Landrieu as part of a $40m public safety package in 2017 after deadly vehicle attacks had been aimed at crowds in Nice, Berlin, London, New York and Barcelona.
Landrieu left office in 2019, and officials with the administration of his successor – LaToya Cantrell – have spent time citing flaws with each of the barriers.
They have said one kind of barrier – road-blocking, cylindrical columns known as bollards – was in the process of being replaced on the day of the attack after being worn down by the rigors of Bourbon Street, among the world’s most hard partying drags. Another – a so-called wedge barrier that can be hydraulically raised and lowered in a matter of seconds – had been intentionally left in a down position because officials feared it could malfunction and impede first responders.
Some of those injured in the attack – and the father of one man who was killed – have sued New Orleans’ municipal government, claiming it failed to protect revelers ringing in the new year that day.
In a recent interview on WWL Radio, Cantrell’s director of homeland security and emergency preparedness acknowledged Meridian’s Archer barriers – which can be erected side-by-side or staggered across a roadway and on sidewalks – as “a great product”. He alluded to how they tilt back if struck by a motorist, “get tangled under the vehicle and then … dig into the street and … do a massive amount of damage”.
But he complained “moving them takes significant effort that must be thought of a couple of days before. And then once they’re deployed, moving them takes usually two to three people.”
However, readily accessible videos disprove that it takes up to three people to move Archer barriers. One person of any stature can deploy eight Archers in less than 10 minutes using a proper trailer and pieces of equipment that Meridian refers to as haulers and field tow bars, according to information and instructional videos from Meridian.
The day after the Bourbon Street attack, police in Santa Monica, California, posted a YouTube video showing officers deploying the same kind of Archers that New Orleans bought years earlier. At various points in the footage, individual officers can be seen effortlessly pushing single barriers forward or pulling them while walking backwards.
The same day that video was taken, New Orleans police superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick, who took office in September 2023, told reporters she had only become aware that the city even had those barriers in its public safety arsenal.
Nearby, officers could be seen deploying Archers at the entrance to Bourbon Street using a crane truck rather than the equipment their counterparts in Santa Monica were using. Images show multiple officers working on putting up one individual barrier.
Numerous sources in public safety and emergency management with direct knowledge of New Orleans’ operations confirmed that was one of the manners that the city would put out those barriers rather than using the intended equipment – before they fell out of favor with higher-ups altogether and were stowed away.
Whitford said New Orleans had at least some of the Archer barriers’ deployment accessories. But he suggested the hauler the city had was the first version of a product that is now in about its eighth iteration. And New Orleans essentially lacked the field tow bar, correct trailer and other accessories that would have eased the time and resources it took to roll out the Archer barriers, which are certified by the US’s homeland security department under a congressional act incentivizing anti-terrorism technology.
“They’ve not had the right accessories to make this an easy deployment,” Whitford said. “But they’re going to start.”
Whitford said he had no doubt Archers propped up on sidewalks at the Bourbon Street’s entrance would have stood up to the truck attack at the speed the assailant was going at that point.
Meridian has posted videos of crash tests online that show the barriers being struck by vehicles at about the speed the attacker was going just past the entrance of Bourbon. The dramatic footage vividly illustrates the way it halts those who try to speed their way past them – doing so in a much shorter distance than three blocks the New Orleans attacker went.
“You would have had a completely different outcome,” Whitford said about how he believed New Year’s Day unfolds in New Orleans with the barriers deployed. “I can’t say it any other way.”
Related: New Orleans attack victim’s fiancee condemns city over security failings
And many already had. Whitford explained how the barriers passed their most important real-world test at the Rose Parade in Pasadena, California, where Meridian is headquartered, on New Year’s Day 2024.
That day, a woman who allegedly had a history of mental illness tried but failed to ram her car past an Archer barrier, which held, incapacitated her vehicle and shielded a crowd of unsuspecting spectators from being hurt or worse. Police booked the woman on a count of assault with a deadly weapon.
Whitford said 600 of Meridian’s barriers were out fortifying the 2025 Rose Parade’s 5.4-mile route just hours after the Bourbon Street attack.
Reminders of the carnage on Bourbon Street were visible all around when Whitford traveled to New Orleans in its aftermath.
There was the memorial of flowers, teddy bears and photos of the murdered victims. There was the large truck meant to patch up the city streets’ ubiquitous potholes blocking Bourbon – much bigger and wider than the lone police cruiser left in the same position early New Year’s Day, which the attacker easily drove around.
And there were handwritten messages scrawled on the Archer barriers themselves after being brought out from storage and deployed on the sidewalks at Bourbon Street’s entrance as well as at various intersections further up.
“USE ME,” one read. Another said: “DO NOT HIDE ME.”
Whitford acknowledged having seen the commentaries scrawled on his company’s barriers.
“I get emotional about that because we’ve had a tragedy on our hands, and people are asking for more,” Whitford said. “And they’re asking for the right things.”