Louisiana's two biggest cities took different paths: New Orleans funded community programs to historic success, while Baton Rouge shifted its priorities, leaving the program with little to no funding.
A Baton Rouge teenager once appeared on camera as proof that violence prevention could work. Two years later, he is charged in a shooting that killed 17-year-old Martha Odom. Their stories are not separate tragedies. They are connected by the same policy choices, budget cuts and abandoned promises that leave one child dead and another held by a system that failed to hold him sooner.
