Just 15 minutes after stepping off the train at Baltimore's Penn station I found myself standing behind the yellow crime-scene tape after a shooting. We had been alerted to the attack on N Milton Avenue, in the east of the city, via Twitter. In the UK, the micro-blogging site is used mainly by people wanting to follow the thoughts and inanities of celebrities such as Stephen Fry. Here in Baltimore, the police use it to alert the media to shootings and homicides, such is their regularity.
Baltimore ain't like Brixton
The Independent's crime reporter comes to America to see how we do it in Mobtown.