CNN Analyst Says New Orleans Authorities ‘Need to Answer’ for Decision to Remove Security Barriers

CNN senior justice correspondent Evan Perez cast a critical eye at New Orleans officials over the decision to remove security barricades that could have prevented the deadly vehicular attack in the early morning hours of New Year’s Day.

Investigators have said that the suspect in the attack, 42-year-old Shamsud-Din Jabbar, drove a rented pickup truck into a crowd of New Year’s revelers on Bourbon Street. Jabbar, a U.S. citizen and Army veteran who lived in Texas, was killed after a shootout with police. At least 14 other people were killed and dozens more were wounded. The FBI has said the attack is being investigated as an act of terrorism.

The Jan. 1 Sugar Bowl game between Georgia and Notre Dame was delayed for one day due to security concerns, and will now begin at 3 p.m. CT Thursday.

According to a report by The New York Times, New Orleans officials confirmed that “security bollards designed to prevent vehicles from hitting pedestrians were not in place at the site because they were being replaced as part of the city’s preparations to host the Super Bowl next month.”

While the replacements were being prepared, officials used “parked police cars and other barriers, as well as patrolling officers” to guard the popular tourist district, but the driver drove the truck onto a sidewalk to get around a police car blocking the road.

“We did indeed have a plan, but the terrorist defeated it,” said New Orleans Police Department Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick.

NOPD Captain Lejon Roberts, whose command includes the French Quarter, said that someone driving around the police cars “wasn’t something we expected to account for.”

Perez sharply condemned these decisions on Thursday’s episode of Inside Politics with Dana Bash, telling guest anchor Phil Mattingly that it was “important” to discuss how the officials in New Orleans “still have not really held any accountability for what happened,” even though the incident happened just “days after a Christmas day attack in Germany where the FBI, everyone warned everyone about soft targets, gathering of huge number of people on New Year’s Eve — one of the biggest targets in America.”

“How do you allow your bollards to be removed and not have something that they’re only now belatedly putting in?” Perez asked. “New Orleans officials, the governor there, all of them, need to answer for that, because the victims here — there were 15 people who were dead, multiple people who have been injured — they deserve some kind of accountability, some kind of answer for what has happened because there were failures there that were preventable. And I think that is an important thing for people to address in the coming days.”

Those were “critical questions that will most certainly be asked in the days ahead in the near term,” said Mattingly, adding that the mayor had said that Bourbon Street would be open before kickoff.

Watch the clip above via CNN.