Real Talk: Turning Boys N2 Gentlemen

“The morning after a gunman killed 21 people at an elementary school in Texas, Officer Keith Linton, rather than reviewing the stock market as a math lesson, scrapped his plans.

The fifth- and sixth graders, nearly 20 of them at 75th Street Elementary, had other ideas. They wanted to talk about the violence at a Texas school, and in their own neighborhoods.

In the past month alone, Officer Linton told them, 30 homicides and 155 shootings have been recorded in this part of South Los Angeles. The students were eager to talk, if not listen, as he led the conversation like a family.

‘They want the discipline,” he said later of the students, “but they want us to shut up, listen and let them have a voice.’”…

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