At least some public safety officials in New Orleans evidently remain skeptical of easily deployable, 700lb steel barriers designed to prevent intentional vehicle ramming attacks – even after one carried out on the city’s most famous street on New Year’s Day killed 14 people and injured 67 others, according to a trove of government emails obtained by the Guardian.
Received through a public records request, the emails detail how the inventor of so-called Archer barriers – which the city had bought but kept in storage on the day of the deadly Bourbon Street attack – encountered a measure of resistance when he traveled to New Orleans with his company of his own volition to train local authorities on how to expeditiously deploy the barricades.
