NEW ORLEANS — Maya Butler is senior student ambassador at Edna Karr Highschool and says the school is still healing from the death of her murdered schoolmate Keyron Ross.
Just eight days ago, police say someone came up behind Ross’ car and shot at him multiple times.
“It is a lot, but healing has started, I hope it has started for most,” Butler said.
She says one thing that helps is seeing New Orleans’ two top law enforcement agents, who have been at odds with each other, come to the table.
At her school.
Butler says she has been voicing her discontents to teachers with seeing the D.A. and Police Chief point fingers at one another.
“If you have chaos at the top then it’s hard for there to be unity anywhere else,” Butler said.
That sentiment is part of the reason why the two men wanted to meet at the school today, understanding that earning the trust of the youth is a crucial step in the process to slow the crime surge in the City of New Orleans.
“The exact thing the we discussed, that we as men have to come together and show that you can have a peaceful resolve, a resolution. We can agree to disagree,” Ferguson said. “There were a couple of things that we disagreed on and we thought it was important that we came together so that you could see us reaching consensus in a very short period of time.”
At the press conference, there was a lot of talk about clearance rates vs. solve rates, task force, budgets and crime plans.
But for Butler, after the lights and cameras go away, she wants to see action.
She wants to see if Police Chief Shaun Ferguson and District Attorney Jason Williams will take action to earn the trust of her and her peers.
“Normally the youth they don’t trust law enforcement, “ Butler said. ”If they don’t trust you when you do have it together, if they know they you guys don’t even trust each other and you guys are going against each other, okay now I have even more of a reason to not trust you, because you guys don’t trust each other.”
And a child shall lead them.