
Recently, images surfaced of people moving the Bourbon Street barricades meant to deter vehicular traffic with ease. This is just one of many issues that have been consistently plaguing the area. Bryan Lagarde, Executive Director of Project NOLA, spoke to WWL’s Newell Normand about what is being done to help combat these problems.
“We’re using facial recognition, license plate recognition, clothing recognition. We can detect people illegally dumping trash or jumping fences into areas where they shouldn’t be. We use artificial intelligence to bring our attention to these issues immediately,” Lagarde explained. He hopes that increased awareness of these issues will allow officers to properly deal with them.
Bourbon Street will soon be implementing a vehicle detection system according to Lagarde that will alert the NOPD in real time when a vehicle travels down the pedestrian corridor after hours. While Lagarde notes that the NOPD is currently understaffed, the hope is that these high-tech tools will help to take pressure off some of the officers in the department.
“We don’t have as many officers as we would like to have and they’re spread very thin on Bourbon Street. An officer might not see (some of these offenses), but with our system, it will automatically alert the 8th District Station as well as officers that have our mobile app on their phone,” Lagarde went on to note.