A New Year’s Day attack by a lone wolf terrorist in New Orleans, which killed 15 people, prompted a Chicago alderman to call for the city to improve the quality of barrier protection during upcoming 2025 City of Chicago events.
On Jan. 2, Ald. Raymond Lopez (15th) called for the City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events to replace currently required Type III Barriers with mobile barriers for permitted outdoor events to keep residents and visitors safe due to increasing vehicular violence.
“We need to be looking smaller because terrorists and those who are looking to do harm are always going to find a weak point and, in my opinion, the weak point, the soft targets like those neighborhood festivals are things we just take for granted,” he said.
Mobile barriers, purchased by the city for the Democratic National Convention, offer better protection. Lopez wants equal levels of protection for all events in the city to prevent Chicagoans’ suffering due to lack of preparation, he said.
Chicago park events with roadside access are an example of a soft target.
Alderman Lopez wants safety updates done for parks, too, he added, saying that many festivals throughout the city, like the Logan Square Farmers Market, have the absolute minimum safety precautions.
“Right now, there are hundreds of events throughout the City of Chicago,” he said. “There are 77 neighborhoods, and even in my own ward, where we have Fiesta Back of the Yards, we’ve always used those barricades or wooden horses to try and show that a street is closed,” Lopez said.
Currently, the city requires event organizers to rent Type III barriers, with costs ranging from $30 for wooden barricades to $330 for a 10-foot concrete Jersey barrier, according to Westchester Tool Rentals’ most recent price list. Lopez stressed that the city must prioritize safety over cost.
Increasingly common due to their low cost, ease of execution, and the potential to cause mass casualties, vehicle attacks are on the rise, according to Ryan Houser, a terrorism and mass-casualty researcher. Such attacks can overwhelm police and emergency responders within seconds, Houser said in a Jan. 1 USA Today article.
Also reported by the USA Today article, federal security experts recommend using barriers including large trucks, garbage vehicles, and concrete Jersey barriers configured in an “S” shape to slow speeding vehicles.
In Chicago, Southwest Collective transit advocacy steward Dixon Galvez-Searle, thinks there might be additional use for new temporary traffic safety infrastructure that has been installed when considering Southwest Side neighborhood street fairs, events in parks or block parties.
The Southwest Side neighborhood organization has been tracking area fatalities and street infrastructure remedies like safety islands, tree plantings, refuge islands, safety bollards and lane reduction on South Pulaski Road.
Some of the temporary safety infrastructure already installed will be replaced with concrete by the Chicago Department of Transportation despite some plastic delineator bollards already sustaining damage, he added.
“They’re new, so I’m sort of agnostic about their effectiveness,” Galvez-Searle added.
Southwest Collective members see, daily, how hazardous trucks and larger vehicles can be on Pulaski. Large vehicles ride higher and could serve as a weapon, Galvez-Searle said.
“When the alderman is talking about this kind of souped-up infrastructure that is physically going to stop a vehicle from coming into a crowd, that raises a good point,” he said. “Vehicles can do a lot of damage, intentional or unintentional and there are a lot of things we can do to physically prevent a vehicle from going where it’s not supposed to be going whether that’s through a crowd or onto a sidewalk.”
Galvez-Searle, who stated he does not have a formal transportation background, said a proposal to make important safety infrastructure changes to Archer Avenue, which is two lanes in each direction, could result in an improved streetscape making it a better candidate for two-block Archer Avenue neighborhood events because walking will be safer.
“There really is a lot of appetite for this and we don’t get a lot of it,” he said. “A lot of us take it upon ourselves to do that. We do lots of block parties in our neighborhood and use our cars to block off the street. For the big events, you’re going to go somewhere else.”
Safer streets could give Southwest Side neighborhoods a chance to hold smaller events allowing neighbors to socialize with one another while enjoying an outdoor street festival, he added.
All said, Alderman Lopez is pleased the department is willing to work with him and the Department of Transportation to make needed changes moving forward, he said.
All city departments including the Office of Emergency Management are being pulled into the fold, Lopez said.
“You cannot put a price on keeping people safe; the world has changed, continues to change and we need to change with it. Promoters need to accept that higher levels of security precautions are the new reality we all must address,” he said.
The Office of Emergency Management did not respond to the Southwest News Herald’s request for comment on this story.
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