In an effort to enhance public safety during high-traffic gatherings, the Bristol Police have recently obtained
Meridian Archer barriers, a new technology that will provide a proven solution for mitigating vehicle-based threats — a growing concern for public safety departments everywhere.

The system, valued at $200,000, was obtained thanks to a competitive justice assistance grant prepared last year by Lt. Brian Morse.

“Bristol is the first PD to garner this important equipment to combat a vehicle-borne threat in the State of RI,” said Chief Kevin Lynch. “As part of the grant, we agreed to share this equipment with other RI departments, and we believe it was the catalyst for us winning this competitive grant.”

The system is comprised of barriers and cables that can be configured in a number of layouts to provide security for events like fairs, festivals and concerts in public parks.
Designed for one-person loading, unloading and positioning without special equipment, this system can quickly secure perimeters using a standard towing vehicle, allowing public safety on-the-spot capability to block roads and reconfigure layouts to adjust to the area being protected.
A vehicle attempting to crash the barrier would find itself instantly (and likely permanently) disabled. (You can see them in action at betterbarriers.com).

“It really was on the heels of moving the concert series,” said Lynch. “We were looking for other options.”
“They have different components to it,” said Town Administrator Steve Contente. “Say you want to get all of the vendors in and have the equipment set up at a State Street fair. You would open the gate, allow all of the vendors to come in to get set up then lock the gate down and now you've got the whole road properly secured.”
Though the individual barrier units are extremely heavy — about 700 pounds — a dolly system lets one person easily relocate each.

“It gives us flexibility if a crowd swells,” said Contente. “You can now close the road down…it gives us more flexibility on where we have events in the future, which is nice.”

Officers will be going through training for vehicle mitigation planning in December that will certify everybody on how to secure an event for vehicle mitigation.

“Bristol has a lot of events, community-wide events. This allows us to be creative in venue design,” said Lynch.
Saturday December 6 will likely be their first deployment, for the Grand Illumination.

“You know there were security concerns about the concerts being at Independence Park,” Lynch added. “And some of the issues that we discussed were vehicle-borne threats. Security, we call it hardening a location. So this is one thing that we'll be able to have a solid check next to.”