As the Educational flyer to the left describes, In April of 2012, Fredrick Martin was killed as he shielded his young son from the bullets of unknown killers at his home.

 

Later, at a press conference, James Butts announced that a family friend of Martin's was offering a $10,000.00 reward for information about Martin's killers.

 

As "Inglewood Today" reported in the April 12th article used to the left, during the press conference, Butts "garauateed" that the killers would be caught and prosecuted, and Butts said that he hoped that a "series of reward offerings" would follow the one that was offered that day. Some time later, Butts voted for the City of Inglewood offering another, $25,000.00, reward. 

 

So, in summary, Butts told the news media, the public, and the grivining friends and family of Fredrick Martin that the killer/s would be caught, he implied that he thought that offering many rewards would help do that, and he later voted to offer another, $25,000.00, reward.

 

However, at the April 9, 2013 council meeting, about a year after Mr. Martin's murder, the fact that his killer/s were still loose was brought up. One Councilwoman, an adversary of Butts, said that a bigger reward might have been more useful.  However, in his closing comments, Butts chastized the councilwoman, saying that she should have done her research and found out that rewards don't work.  Butts said that he had never seen a reward work and he said that it was always unlikely that Martin's killer/s would ever be caught.

 

James Butts exploited Martin's death to get on TV and act like the big, tough Mayor, who offers rewards and catches criminals. But later, after Butts squeezed all of the publicity he could out of the muder of a loving father, Butts completely contradicted his previous positions.