The terror attack on Bourbon Street in New Orleans in the early hours of New Year’s Day that left at least 15 people dead has drawn fresh attention to the risk individuals face when in the middle of crowds in public spaces, especially during major outdoor events.

Authorities believe Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a 42-year-old U.S. citizen from Texas, was the man who drove a pickup bearing an ISIS flag into mobs of revelers during the annual New Years celebration. The military veteran was killed at the scene in a gun battle with police.

It was far from the only time in recent years that assailants have victimized people gathered in outdoor venues.

For many, memories are still hauntingly fresh of April 15, 2013, the day two terrorists inspired by an al-Qaeda online newsletter planted bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three and injuring hundreds more. And of Oct. 1, 2017, when a 64-year-old gunman opened fire from the 32nd floor of a hotel onto a crowd of people attending a music festival in Las Vegas, killing 60 and wounding more than 400.

Meanwhile, vehicle attacks like the one Din Jabbar is accused of committing have become a more popular tactic for terrorists over the past decade.

The deadliest such assault occurred when a Tunisian-born French resident drove a rented truck along a packed seaside promenade in Nice, France, on Bastille Day in 2016, killing 86. An American ISIS supporter rammed pedestrians on a New York City bike path the following year, leaving 8 dead.

Terrorists carried out similar attacks at crowded Christmas markets in Berlin in 2016 and in Magdeburg, Germany, on Dec. 30, killing 18 and injuring hundreds.

One public safety expert tells people in Baltimore and beyond to keep in mind that, as frightening as it is to hear of such events, they’re still so rare that they shouldn’t prevent anyone from attending and enjoying the public gatherings they’re interested in.

But keeping public events safe is such a complex proposition that it’s all but impossible to achieve that goal perfectly, says Brian Nussbaum, an assistant professor at the College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity at the State University of New York at Albany.

Tactics such as vehicle attacks “are not entirely unpreventable, but they’re very, very tough to prevent. They even take place in police states like China, where surveillance is a lot more pervasive than it is here. In a free society, they’re probably not a risk that can be eliminated.”

That, Nussbaum says, is because so-called soft targets are plentiful even when it comes to sizable events: The spaces involved can be spread out, potential terrorists have a range of approaches to choose from, and public-safety resources have their limits.

Experts say it’s local law enforcement that keeps the closest tabs on potential threats and that initiates any needed security measures, whether it’s during the course of daily life or as major gatherings — think NFL, NBA or major-league baseball games, music festivals or citywide holiday celebrations — draw near on the calendar.

Law enforcement agencies such as the Baltimore Police Department have intelligence units that keep feelers out for potential threats within their jurisdiction and that keep officers alert and informed. But they’re not alone in that work. They stay in close contact with state and federal intelligence agencies that keep databases on regional, national and global trends and communicate with local officials, particularly if major events are in the offing.

“In big cities like Baltimore, there’s often rapport with entities known as fusion centers that disseminate such information nationwide,” says Tin Nguyen, an assistant professor of organizational psychology at the University of Nebraska at Omaha who specializes in soft targets and public events. “They can provide a good idea of what the concerns are at the state and federal levels, and local law enforcement can keep that in the backs of their minds” as they make preparations for events.

The Maryland Coordination and Analysis Center (MCAC), a state agency, provides that service, “gathering, analyzing, and sharing intelligence with law enforcement, public health, and emergency responder personnel” in the state, according to its website.

Such centers heighten their efforts in the wake of tragedies like the one in New Orleans. Here in Maryland, Governor Wes Moore’s office said Thursday that MCAC is doing just that and seeing no signs of anything unusual in our region.

“There is currently no active threat within the state, as the Moore-Miller administration continuously monitors our security status in partnership with all levels of law enforcement,” Brittany Marshall, a spokeswoman for Moore, said in a statement. “Our state’s law enforcement agencies remain vigilant and continue to coordinate through (MCAC) for any possible threats against the public or state and local institutions.”

Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott’s office offered a similar assurance. “Local law enforcement, in coordination with federal partners, is constantly evaluating emerging threats and working to ensure security, particularly around large events like this weekend’s NFL game,” an office spokesperson said in a statement, referring to the Ravens’ scheduled home game against the Cleveland Browns Sunday. “The Mayor’s Office and Baltimore Police approach these matters with the utmost priority and will continue to do so in the wake of incidents around the country.”

M&T Bank Stadium holds more than 71,000 people, and many will be tailgating and walking around the area before and after the 4:30 game. Experts generally consider major sporting events like NFL games to be well protected, however, as private security organizations expertly team up with local law enforcement to turn what might otherwise be considered soft targets into what are probably some of the hardest targets for bad actors to penetrate. Major sporting venues in the U.S. and beyond have thus far been spared mass attacks.

Nguyen, the University of Nebraska expert, says potential terrorists can be creative and can, if motivated, choose from a wide variety of attack methods, depending on their target, and law enforcement must assess every situation on its own merits, including the possibility of assailants shooting downward from rooftops. Then they’ll have to balance that potential need against other factors: How many agents are available on a given day, and to what extent will they include the state and federal officers locals ask for? (In the case of major events, state and federal agents are typically called on.) What’s the likelihood of that tactic being used as compared to other possibilities? What equipment is available, what are the law-enforcement needs in the rest of the city, and how much money can be allocated?

In the case of large outdoor events, law enforcement must consider where bad actors might have an opening to launch a vehicle attack and, where appropriate and feasible, position physical barriers, whether they be temporary or permanent bollards (vertical protective poles), slabs of cement, city sanitation or fire trucks or even school buses, depending on the level of risk. That possibility is greater than it was 12 years ago, as terrorists — some of them inspired by explicit urging and instruction on the websites of international terror organizations such as al-Qaeda and ISIS — have found cars and light trucks easily accessible, cheap to operate and easily deployed as weapons.

Rather than go after hard targets directly, bad actors might target immediately adjacent areas that are less intensely protected, says Nguyen, who works with the Nebraska university’s National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education Center, which has consulted on challenges ranging from Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meetings to the College Baseball World Series, both of which take place in Omaha.

One lesser-known challenge for safety officials face is that law enforcement is only responsible for protecting public spaces such as streets and parks and not, say, the private businesses located on or near them.

That places a burden on police departments and city officials to persuade those businesses to stay up to date on trends in public safety and to install features of their own such as surveillance cameras. Most do, but in the case of the New Orleans attack, it might have helped greatly, Nguyen says, if more businesses along the sidewalks of Bourbon Street had been able to install subtler but nonetheless effective features such as bushes and trees out front.

Those would likely have slowed the assailant’s rampage as effectively as the bollards that many have been discussing since Wednesday. Bollards in New Orleans were undergoing replacement and had been disengaged New Year’s Day.

One who understands the challenges both New Orleans and Baltimore face is former Baltimore Police Commissioner Michael Harrison, who served as Baltimore’s top cop from 2019 to 2023 and in the same capacity in New Orleans before that.

Implementing additional safety measures, he said, requires planning and persuasiveness. After the 2016 incident in Nice, he helped prevail on New Orleans to spend millions to erect protection around Bourbon Street. In Baltimore, he said, he had to ask the mayor and city council to use government trucks to protect crowds.

“We had to pay other city employees overtime,” he recalled. “We had to do things the city had not done before. By deploying the vehicles, we had to deploy the people who drive the vehicles. That was something new to the city, but we did it and it was effective.”

Still, he warned that if the New Orleans tragedy teaches anything, it’s that safety experts and officials can never rest on their laurels. He “would admonish” leaders to “think differently now.”

“None of us should make assumptions that what we have will work,” Harrison said. “We have to always test it and make sure that we are filling in the gaps and making sure that everyone puts his or her best thoughts forward on how to prevent this from happening again, regardless if it’s New Orleans, Baltimore or anywhere else.”

Alex Mann, Carson Swick and Sam Janesch contributed to this report. Have a news tip? Contact Jonathan Pitts at jpitts@baltsun.com, 410-332-6990 and x.com/@jonpitts77.