It is 2:25 in the afternoon as EMTs struggle to help the writhing man, facedown in the dirt on the sidewalk.

They strap him onto a stretcher. His head lolls, his T-shirt rides up exposing his belly and white foam crusts around his mouth. It is hardly a rare occurrence, according to one bystander.

'This is a high drugs run,' he explains, gesturing up and down W North Avenue, 'They OD and fall out all the time.'

Within the next three hours and as many blocks there will be three shootings in this pocket of West Baltimore alone.

It is home to some of the most dangerous housing projects in the country, where homicide is an epidemic; drugs are on every corner and rats root around in the mounds of trash strewn in side alleys.