CHICAGO - For a few days last week, the weed-choked South Side block where Jennifer Hudson's family was killed became an oasis of safety in the nation's deadliest big city.
"If she wasn't famous, all of the media wouldn't be here," said Michelle Strickland, 23, standing near the hundreds of teddy bears piled in tribute. "The crime rate is really, really high here."
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Cops parked in front of the white clapboard house, detectives worked the streets nearby and TV trucks shone spotlights into the dark - while the drug dealers, gang members and random gunmen who terrorize the Englewood neighborhood moved elsewhere.
"Before this happened, you could just stand out here at night and hear the gunshots all around," said one neighbor, who heard one shot the morning of the murders and thought nothing of it. "You just drive around and you see bears and bottles of liquor. Every time you see that, you know someone got killed there."
More people have been murdered in Chicago this year than in New York - even though New York's population is three times greater. When Hudson's mother, brother and nephew were killed last month, they pushed the city's homicide total for the year to 436 and counting. New York has had 430 homicides.
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"We're not proud of it," Mayor Richard Daley said last week, as the killings put new scrutiny on Chicago's out-of-control crime as the city bids for the 2016 Olympics. "We'll get it down next year. We'll get it down. We'll do things differently."
Cops and criminologists say Chicago's stubborn murder rate is a product of larger forces that are tough to control - entrenched street gangs, a heavy drug trade and a culture of gunplay.
"Everyone has a gun," said Chicago police spokeswoman Monique Bond, who said a recent gun buyback program netted 7,000 weapons in three hours. "We've got 75,000 gang members - that's almost six gang members to one police officer."
The NYPD was able to make remarkable strides against seemingly intractable crime in the 1990s - tracking statistics to isolate hot spots, then flooding violent blocks with cops.
Chicago has tried similar strategies, creating a platoon of cops to saturate bloody neighborhoods.
Academics who study crime, though, say Chicago cops' history of brutal misconduct hurts their ability to curb violence - whether because residents don't trust police or because officers have recently been forced to abandon aggressive tactics.
Chicago also must deal with decades of gang warfare that divides the city, a factor that makes it harder to drive down crime with New York-style tactics.
"It's intergenerational," said Loyola University Chicago criminologist Arthur Lurigio. "If you ask gang members today, 'Why are you shooting and killing each other?' they can't really explain."
Chicago's new police superintendent, former FBI agent Jody Weis, is under pressure for results, especially if hometown hero Sen. Barack Obama is elected President from the country's big-city murder capital.
Weis plans to launch a mobile strike force of officers to saturate violent areas, search for gang members and arrest offenders who have open warrants.
But the city council has for decades resisted plans to redraw the police patrol map, permanently shifting cops from low-crime to high-crime areas.
Meanwhile, the economy is getting worse - which means cops, experts and average Englewood residents are bracing for more abandoned buildings, more desperation, more crime and more violence.
"There's no block safe right now because of the economic situation," said Gary Chapple, 41, who moved from Englewood to the far South Side to escape the violence - and hopes a President Obama can help bring change to his hometown.
"His message is about change, but he can't do it by himself," Chapple said. "It's going to focus attention. Everybody's going to wait to see what's going to happen. I pray that something strong happens."
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