Turn the French Quarter into a pedestrian zone with hydraulic bollocks to allow the delivery trucks into the area. After 9 pm, no more deliveries.
hydraulic bollocks
Lol
10 dead, 30 injured after car intentionally plows into crowds in New Orleans
Yet another fucking exculpatory headline minimizing the agency of the assailant because his weapon of choice happened to be a car. No, headline writer, the car didn’t do a goddamn thing; its driver did. Even putting “intentionally” in there, while better than nothing, still fails to make up for using the wrong subject!
Better version:
10 dead, 30 injured after assailant intentionally rams car into crowd in New Orleans
This is basically the same type of shit as minimizing police responsibility with headlines like “bystander struck by bullet during officer-involved shooting” (as opposed to “police officer shoots bystander”), and just as systematic and egregious. The only difference is that it’s done in service of car-supremacy rather than the abusive police state. I am really sick and tired of it, in both contexts.
After ramming the crowd, the killer got out and opened fire.
This was an intentional attack.
The key point is that that intention needs to be ascribed to the person, not the inanimate object.
I wasn’t arguing against that. I was giving missing context
Media literacy FTW
This is how propaganda does the heavy lifting, folks, not with spotlights and posters, but grammatical sleight of mind.
Bollards save lives. All pedestrian areas should be protected from cars by some kind of physical barrier. This protects against intentional attacks and drunk driving incidents.
The French Quarter has retractable bollards in that area. They had been temporarily removed for upgrades ahead of the Super Bowl. At least that’s the story circulating here.
If that’s true I hope they get the shit sued out of them. “Oh sorry we decided to risk you all being murdered for a while”
New Orleans government is legendarily inconmpetent and corrupt, especially law enforcement.
Yeah, and my understanding was there was some other kind of blockade up and he just went around it.
Including bike lanes and bikeways!
There are bollards around the quarter during events. Reports are that the truck. Intensionally avoided and drove through barriers
Reports ARE that the truck.
I agree with you that bollards save lives, but this appears to be a situation where normally drivable streets are closed off for a street party. Is there a feasible way to temporarily block those streets with something that would stop these incidents and also not damage the road (and also not cost taxpayers a ridiculous amount, obviously)?
A simple solution to me would be to place concrete blocks like this
Using a truck like this
That’s what my city does when there is a street party.
Not possible. The French quarter is very small with narrow streets which are used daily when there are no events
If a garbage truck or delivery truck can get there, then so can a forklift bringing the blocks in from an adjacent street or staging area.
FFS
I was thinking of blocking every street between Canal to the West, Rampart to the North, Esplanade to the East and Decatur to the South. I’ve been to the NOLA French Quarter before and know how busy it gets around event nights. The streets I mentioned surrounding the french quarter are wide enough to bring a massive truck in. The spacing will be wide enough for the mounted police the city employs, or motorbikes where needed, but not enough for cars.
I hope you also will leave room for fire trucks
Fire departments need to quit insisting on buying the most massive trucks they can possibly find in every situation. Places outside the US get by just fine with much smaller fire trucks than we use (especially for lower density / low-rise areas). We’ve got to quit turning our residential streets into freeways by building them so wide, and the trucks’ bulk and turning radius needs to stop being an excuse.
If you build high buildings, you need more ladder as a rule of thumb. You can either have more stations, some with smaller gear, or you can economically consolidate.
Certainly, an event emergency plan would include one or two service entrances with the blocks placed slightly further apart.
I wonder how cost-effective doing that would be and also what the damage potential to the street would be? I realize those are callous things to talk about when you’re talking about protecting people’s lives, but unfortunately American cities run on whether or not people think their taxpayer dollars are being spent properly.
A minor sized town near me uses these types of blocks regularly to block off the main street for pedestrians.
I’ll also say I’ve seen Philadelphia just park garbage trucks to block off roads.
Now a garbage truck sounds like a good, cost-effective solution.
They’ll need the garbage truck there at the end of the party anyway.
And if you get too drunk and pass out on the sidewalk, you don’t wake up in the police dunk tank. Instead you wake up in the city dump!
They would do far less damage to the roads than the normal traffic rolling over them would over the same period. Damage to the road occurs primarily through point loads. These are distributed area loads that only exert a modest pressure on the ground.
For street parties in my city, they have used concrete “Jersey barriers” or other off the shelf large concrete blocks to temporarily block the ends of the street.
Yes, block them permanently. Fuck cars.
I’m sure New Orleans will get on that right after they put solar panels on every building, a windmill on top of every skyscraper, and free food and education for all.
You forgot all cops getting fired because there will be no crime there
They have them. The is one wasn’t up for some reason I have not ascertained yet.
What are you adding to the conversation ?
Removed by mod
My thoughts and opinions? That is, apparently, what discussion forums are for.
You are free to block me if you don’t care to read them. Lemmy gives that option.
Bollards that can raise/lower aren’t that expensive and they don’t need to be mechanized. Back at my university, they’d raise them when they’d close off driveable areas for events and there’s just a hook to lift them up and secure at a higher height with a lock. They were made of solid metal and concrete so I assume they had some sort of counterweight underneath to help raise them.
They have them on every street leading into the busy part of Bourbon. This one was down for some reason.
In Austin they commonly block off all roads to 6th Street with at least a cop car, if not two or three. I think this was something overlooked by whoever planned the event, leaving an unprotected street.
In my college town they would use the municipal snow plows to block streets for festivals. I don’t care how much redneck shit you’ve done to your F350, it isn’t beating a snow plow.
NYC uses garbage trucks, in conjunction with cement bricks and pedestrian fencing at large events like NYE. The garbage trucks are easy to move in case emergency access is required.
That sounds more fun than cop cars also. It’d be cool to see that.
Cops still do that here for large street events. One of the streets does it often and they eventually installed retractable bollards.
I’ve seen moveable anti car barricades. I think they work the same as those anti tank things. If someone runs into it the car is lifted off the ground. Something like this https://barriers.miframsecurity.com/products/
Caltrops
If you’re really determined to plow into a crowd of people, you’ll do it on the rims.
I mean, not as many though, and could possibly disable the car. Minimal damage to infrastructure, easy to clean up, doesn’t really affect pedestrians. Spike strips are used to disable cars all the time in car chases. And have you ever tried to drive on a rim, let alone four of them? Control and speed will not be your greatest strengths, less likely to still be at large after the crime. Better than nothing, evidently.
I don’t know that control or speed are really big concerns when barreling toward a large crowd of people. And good luck getting a huge crowd of drunk partiers to stop spilling over toward the caltrops.
Lack of speed and control would hinder any plans they may have had, may have made a mistake, may have been taken into custody. It’s not perfect. But neither was the system they were using to secure the street.
I know. We’ll just use anti-vehicle land mines instead! That will keep the cars at bay and make everyone feel safe!
They have them. There are bollards and retractable mechanical devices to block off the busy part of Bourbon. One was down for some reason.
Ostensibly the bollards aren’t on the sidewalk so the assailant drove around them
last may the governor signed a law making it legal for drivers to run over people blocking the road fyi
Huh, I wonder why there are no racist posts on right wing social media
Officers returned fire, killing Jabbar , a U.S.-born citizen from Texas, sources said.
Ahh, there it is.
“mere hours before the attack, [Jabbar] posted videos on social media indicating that he’s inspired by ISIS, expressing a desire to kill.”
Bro what???
He also did IT for the US army so yeah, pretty unexpected.
Private contractors are a huge portion of IT for the military.
Just another day in the world’s greatest country.
/s if it isn’t obvious
To be fair this was likely inspired from the German Christmas market attack. Though… they don’t have the best track record as a country either.
I don’t know how the roads were not blocked. After a similar attack many years ago, all streets with events I have been to are blocked with garbage trucks, police cars or huge concrete blocks to prevent attacks like this.
Edit: read that there was a police car blockade and the he drove around it on the side walk.
I was in NYC a couple weeks ago, and Rockerfeller was closed to traffic and PACKED. What was holding back traffic? A couple cops holding police tape, lmao.
Wow, even my pissant Midwest town has proper anti-vehicle roadblocks that they roll out for any parade or event
I was referring to Times Square for New Years. Surprised it isn’t the same in other places.
What are the odds this murderer is a big fan of Elon Musk like the guy in Germany?
Also:
adding the driver had not been taken into custody.
What does this mean? They’re at large? They were found not at fault and were let go? The cops told them, “get out of here, you scamp!” What?
Subheading:
The driver remained at large after the Bourbon Street incident, police said.
Well damn it, I read the whole article but the subheading.
lol, it happens to the best of us.
The article has been updated:
the suspect allegedly got out of the truck wielding an assault rifle and opened fire on police officers, law enforcement officials briefed on the incident told ABC News. Officers returned fire, killing the suspect who was not immediately identified, sources said.
Just for anyone else reading through the comments, they’re now reporting the driver was killed in a shoot out with police on the scene.
It means either they haven’t been found or there’s nobody looking.
My take from the article is that they lack manpower, so I’m leaning towards the latter.
According to some of the news I just saw, they said the driver is dead.
WWLTV (local New Orleans TV station) just said they had multiple confirmations that he is dead. They also said all French Quarter hotels are under lockdown, so no beignets this morning, tourists. Sorry.
Apparently they were flying an ISIS flag. So probably not in this case.
Correct.
But a concerning thing to me is that there has been a lot of crossover between some white nationalists and extreme islamist terror orgs over the last decade or so.
They have very similar (conservative) values and goals (accelerationism). One WN group that was recently busted up was called The Base, which is also the English meaning of Al Qaeda.
Though the American government is much more quick to label Islamic adjacent attackers terrorists than any white attacker.
The overlap is Abrahamic religion
Despite their similar ideology these groups have almost no overlap because they hate one another so I guess I’m not following your line of thought here. Besides endorsing similar tactics and hateful ideologies is there any other connection?
I updated my previous comment with the details I had forgotten. Commenting again since you probably won’t see an update.
In summary: google Devon Arthurs. He’s a neo-nazi kid who converted to an ISIS wacko and then killed some people and took some others hostage. That’s one clear connection.
That is interesting. I guess it makes sense that violent, unstable people might be drawn to organizations with mutually exclusive underlying values if they are similar in more substantial ways and use the same techniques to prey on such people.
Bingo!
I find it a bit funny you said basically “aside from their worldview being almost exactly the same, there’s no overlap.”
Two groups can hate one another and still fundamentally have the same worldview.
I meant overlap in membership.
I’ve seen some connections in my research recently, but can’t find the article mentioning it.
I want to say there were ties between the remains of the AWD (after their leadership was arrested in TX/FL), the 09A (which is quite possibly bring run by state intelligence orgs) and ISIS.I’ll look through my notes more and see if I kept the link and I’ll update here.Update: So my memory was kinda close. A kid from AWD, Devin Arthurs, was a neo-nazi who later converted to Islam and was a supporter of ISIS.
I think it is no small coincidence that this kid converted. The ideologies are much more similar than you would think.
Another scary similarity between these two factions is that they both actively trying to recruit from the US military and ask their supporters to join the US military to get training and intelligence access.
Please do not fall for the right-wing rumor mill. There was a flag. That’s pretty much all we can say for sure right now.
https://www.newsweek.com/flag-back-truck-new-orleans-attack-raises-questions-2008295
It says it was confirmed to be an ISIS flag by the FBI, but that doesn’t rule out a literal false flag attack to justify reprisals against Muslims.
Your own article confirms it was an ISIS flag so I have no idea why you responded so dismissively.
The article has been updated. It even says so at the top.
The suspect was a member of one of the world’s largest and most extensively distributed terrorist organizations, the US Army.
“mere hours before the attack, [Jabbar] posted videos on social media indicating that he’s inspired by ISIS, expressing a desire to kill.”
Did…did you read the same articles as everyone else?
Nah sorry he wasn’t brown
From The Guardian, which is doing live updates:
More details of what happened in Bourbon Street are beginning to emerge.
According to reports on the ground from US network CBS, the white truck crashed into the victims at high speed while they were celebrating the New Year.
The driver, according to witnesses who spoke to CBS, then got out and began firing a weapon. Police then returned fire.
What a nightmare.
Just added:
Alethea Duncan, an assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s New Orleans field office, said officials were investigating the discovery of at least one suspected improvised explosive device at the scene.
I’m going to laugh if it turns out that those aren’t actual IEDs planted by a terrorist, but just fireworks hid on the scene earlier by revelers. They were hoping to sneak them past the guards before the event even started.
Using a Ford Lightning means at least they were concerned with the environment.
Or they wanted more weight for mass casualties.
The pictures show the box empty and they could have just used a standard F-350 if weight was the reason.
Yeah, but EV is quieter and heavier By default. There’s probably a way to disable the speaker that puts out the noise to warn pedestrians too. I’m sure they chose that car for a reason.
Base lightning is the same weight as an F-350.
Or thought they were Thor.
Last thing I’d want to do is anger a NOLA cop.
Holy ctap. Two cops shot, bomb found in the quarter. Hell of a deal.
The Hotels around Bourbon street have locked their doors, allowing no one in or out.
Bro NOPD is worthless what lol
One day I called the elevator in my condo building. When the doors opened, the interior was covered in blood. There was a guy who was semiconcious leaning there. He was beat to hell. So, I decided to take the stairs. On the way down, I called 911. When I got down to the security gate, there was a NOPD car. I explained what I had seen. The cop explained that he had given the guy a ride to my building. Now, I don’t know what kind of ride it was, but it was obvious he didn’t give a fuck.
“We have information to a certain degree of the demographics of those who are in the hospital right now,” New Orleans Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick said in a news briefing Wednesday morning. “We do not know at this point how many could be tourists versus locals, but from the information I have right now, it seems the majority are locals.”
https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/new-orleans-mass-casualty-bourbon-street-01-01-24-hnk/index.html
Also, there’s this bullshit:
“We do know that the city of New Orleans was impacted by a terrorist attack,” Cantrell said, noting the incident is still under investigation.
Shortly later, an FBI agent told reporters, “This is not a terrorist event.” It was not immediately clear why the mayor and the FBI had differing information.
I can guess
whitewhy.How is this not terrorism, while killing a single CEO is? The term is applied entirely arbitrarily.
Because there’s 51 legal definitions of Terrorism in the US. So effectively, yes. Just like there’s ~3,000 different policies on when and how to use force.
Note the difference in law between US and New York state.
Better he doesn’t get a terrorist charge/label…
Read in yep really consistent government. Such bullshit
He’s dead, after a shootout with the cops
So if they die they aren’t terrorists? So 9-11 weren’t terrorists cause they died in their attack?
He was most definitely a terrorist. Who said he wasn’t?
The FBI, apparently.
We can’t use words like terrorist until we find out what colour they are or if they killed anybody rich.
you only get called a terrorist if you unalive a ceo
Live feed of WWLTV Channel 4 in New Orleans (independent CBS affiliate): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EApLbIRtArk
*croughd
