By: Missy Wilkinson | nola.com | January 5, 2025
Bryan Lagarde spent New Year’s Eve as he usually does: facing a bank of video screens, working.
The criminologist and former police officer, who for years has directed the Project NOLA National Crime Camera Program, was monitoring nationwide feeds and helping law enforcement where he could.
Things were normal in New Orleans after the fleur-de-lis dropped at midnight. Lagarde had turned his attention elsewhere: to a mass shooting in Natchez, Mississippi that was captured by his cameras.
He was winding down his shift after 3 a.m. when the phone rang. It was a New Orleans Police Department officer, and from her voice, Lagarde suspected the worst.
“Officers see a lot. If a homicide detective calls saying, ‘Bryan, I’m standing over a body,’ you can tell from the inflection if it’s a child,” he said. “I could tell from her tone it was extraordinarily bad.
“There was hurt in the voice. There was shock in the voice. And the words she said were, ‘I’m standing in the middle of bodies on Bourbon Street. It’s terrible. There was a terrorist attack.'”
Lagarde said he sprang into action.
ProjectNOLA counts dozens of crime cameras in the Vieux Carre among thousands in the region. Many are equipped with facial and clothing recognition, license-plate readers and AI capabilities.
Those high-res cameras captured a murderous rampage on Bourbon Street that happened “within a matter of seconds,” Lagarde said.
“People reacted to the truck coming through,” he said. “People then reacted to the gunfire. … It was almost over as soon as it started.”
Lagarde had to revisit those seconds again and again, “frame by excruciating frame,” he said, to analyze the scene, make connections and find possible associations.
His cameras have captured countless tragedies over the years, including more than 500 homicides. Far from a voyeur, Lagarde launched the community-based crime camera initiative in 2009 to help reduce crime in a post-Katrina New Orleans grappling with bloodshed.
In 2022, as NOPD’s officer ranks shrank and violence rose, law enforcement agencies increasingly leaned on Project NOLA’s cameras.
Drug deals and shootings are the more common sightings by the French Quarter camera system—not a terrorist attack or the home-made bombs those cameras picked up on New Year’s Day.
After a Louisiana State Police trooper found the first improvised explosive device, Lagarde used high-resolution cameras to search for more and track everyone who’d touched them, he said.
The cameras captured two coolers that held suspected C4 explosives and were wired to detonate remotely. They also filmed crowds of oblivious revelers passing and touching the bombs.
“One was relocated almost a block,” Lagarde said of the explosives-laden coolers. “That was part of what complicated things. Multiple people touched it and we had to look at each and every single person to discount them as a person of interest or a suspect.”
The FBI later released photos from ProjectNOLA cameras of the IEDs, encouraging the public to come forward with any information.
Authorities developed possible suspects who were later discarded. The FBI said its initial investigation has determined that suspected terrorist Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, acted alone. As of Friday afternoon, more than 1,000 tips had poured in.
“I think I worked 30-something hours,” Lagarde said. “I continued working all the way. I never slept that night, and I worked all through the day. … That’s probably the longest shift I ever worked in my 15 years at ProjectNOLA.”
A weary Lagarde said Friday that he was pleased with the group’s contributions to the investigation, and with the teamwork among responding agencies.
“I hate having to see these things, but there’s a point to it. There’s always a point to it,” he said. “The end result is justice being served and closure for loved ones.”