Right next to Cow Palace in south central San Francisco, sit the city's largest housing projects. The crop of former Army barracks is now riddled with holes where bullets narrowly missed patio furniture and children's toys on residents' decks. Walk down the sidewalk, and you'll find shell casings, drink cans, and a dirty diaper.

For the last few months, no one has been sitting on their decks, a security guard told me, just as yesterday morning, when I went to the area to report on the burgeoning homicide rate, the streets were completely empty mid morning, the playground was deserted.

In addition to hanging out with a couple of police officers who let me ride along with them for a bit, I spoke with a number of people in the neighborhood that didn't make it into the story because they didn't want to be named in print and draw attention to themselves. Mostly, they weren't too surprised about the recent upswing in violence, as the place has been pretty nasty for years. One stifled tears as he recounted the recent shooting of a local man, and pointed out a woman who he said was the man's mother. The woman, malt-liquor in hand at 11 am, was not doing so well.