I'm out with the British Broadcasting Corp. Monday and tomorrow looking for crime and of course Baltimore comes through. A man was fatally shot in Southwest Baltimore near a school this morning. This picture by Baltimore Sun reporter Gus Sentementes shows the gun in the alley, next to a yellow evidence marker put there by police (it is hard to see).

It was a typical Baltimore homicide -- a man shot on a street, a gun dropped in an alley, plenty of police tape hanging from door knobs and attached a school fence. At least city schools are closed this week so there were no kids at the adjacent playground. Still, a sad scene in a neighborhood that needs help. We did manage to find a heroin needle in the gutter near the shooting scene.

The BBC cameraman and the producer got a chance to watch crime lab technician bag a pair of pants and shoes and chat briefly with Baltimore Police Maj. Terrence McLarney, the commander of the homicide unit. A deputy police major also stopped by and noted with some disdain that lack of witnesses, another all-to-common part of a city crime scene.

We talked with a man named David Hamilton, who sells sodas from the sidewalk in front of his house across the street from the shooting. He told me he saw four men run out of the alley after the shooting but he also complained that police detectives pressed him for more information. He either refused to give it or insisted he had said all that he knew. As we left, he was taking down his stand, saying the cops warned him about not having a permit.

The shooting on Christian Street will help the BBC show city crime and I took them to a few neighborhoods. On Friday, they will meet some community leaders to talk about what's going on in their neighborhoods. We're filming downtown as well, so yes it's about crime but about the city as well; they're seeing what this city has to offer, and it's not all crime scene tape and shootings in all-but-forgotten parts of Baltimore.

The producer tells me this could run in a week or so, and I'll post a link to the finished product.

Later Monday night, in a steadily increasing rain, we headed to Milton and Monument in East Baltimore where a man had been shot in the back. There wasn't much there when we arrived, cops on the scene laughed as we walked to yellow tape blocking what was essentially a wet street. Police said a man had been shot a few blocks away and either drove was driving to the corner in a minivan, where he got out and collapsed. He had been hit in the back. BBC did get an arrest -- a woman driving south on Milton hit one of the marked police cruisers and was charged with driving under the influence of alcohol.