Updated: 7:20 p.m. ET Aug. 18, 2005

NEW ORLEANS - Last year, university researchers conducted an experiment in which police fired 700 blank rounds in a New Orleans neighborhood in a single afternoon. No one called to report the gunfire.

New Orleans residents are reluctant to come forward as witnesses, fearing retaliation. And experts say that is one of several reasons homicides are on the rise in the Big Easy at a time when other cities are seeing their murder rates plummet to levels not seen in decades.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8999837/

There isn't a more volatile place for this to have occured in the US.