The New Orleans Police Department revealed Thursday that the annual Sugar Bowl will feature heightened security after a man drove directly into a crowd on Bourbon Street earlier this week, leaving 15 dead.
“We are going to have absolutely hundreds of officers and staff lining our streets,” New Orleans Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick said Thursday morning in an interview on NBC’s “TODAY.”
“We are staffing up at the same level if not more so than we were prepared for Super Bowl,” she added.
The college football game between the University of Georgia and University of Notre Dame was originally scheduled for New Year’s Day but was postponed in light of the incident. The teams are now set to square off Thursday afternoon for the quarterfinal game promising to draw a multitude of fans from across the country.
Kirkpatrick specifically highlighted Bourbon Street as an area that will be heavily patrolled after 42-year-old Shamsud-Din Jabbar reportedly used a truck from car-renting app Turo to complete the attack. Jabbar, was fatally shot by police after he opened fire on the officers.
The FBI is investigating the event as a “terrorist attack” after finding an Islamic State (ISIS) extremist group flag on the driver’s car. Little is known about the victims.
Police say there was no evidence leading them to believe an attack would have occurred in the French Quarter on New Year’s Day.
“There was no information that we had and so nothing along those lines,” Kirkpatrick said Thursday.
Lawmakers representing the Pelican State quickly condemned the attack and encouraged residents to spread love instead of “evil.”
“Our city, state, and country are hurting,” Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) wrote on social platform X.
“I want to thank our law enforcement officers who ran towards danger to protect lives,” he added. “May our collective New Year’s resolution be to spread love in the face of evil.”
Louisiana attorney general Liz Murrill (R-La.) said Wednesday that the game should have been pushed to Friday.
“This is an active crime scene and they just finished removing some of the bodies and they still haven’t removed all of them,” she said, adding, “I still think that we probably need to wait an extra day.”