>> can the violence be stopped? kaj larsen travels not front lines of a war few people know about. twisted justice? >> i just saw him up with the bat and he started to swing, and that's when i reached for the gun. >> this new york city cop says he fired to save his father's life. >> i was convicted of second-degree murder. >> but he would walk free after that conviction was overturned. so how did he end up back in prison. >> you must have been crushed? crushed when they told you you had to go back. >> revealing investigations, fascinating characters, stories with impact. this is "cnn presents," with your host tonight, brooke baldwin and dr. sanjay gao give up gupta. way off the radar, just south of mexico is a region that's more violent. >> the northern triangle of guatemala, el salvador, and honduras the deadliest place in the world outside of active war zones. >> in fact, the homicide rate in honduras alone has more than doubled in five years. cnn's kaj larsen journeyed to the heart of the violence. >> reporter: in the past year, over 17,000 people have been murdered in guatemala, el salvador, and honduras. in honduras, over 90% of crimes like murder are never solved. they call it the impunity rate. i asked the chief of police in san pedro sula, the second biggest city here, if they would take us along when a call came in on a crime. a minute later, we got our wish. so we jumped in the trucks and we're headed there right now to see what's going on. >> it's completely real. we're not making up how violent this place is. we've been here four hours and our first body's turned up. they say he's been shot. the impact wound appears to be right here on the right side of his head. and the police commissioner told us that, you know, as is very typical in these situations, nobody saw anything, nobody heard anything, and nobody knows this guy. >> hey, amigo. [ speaking foreign language ] >> nobody wants to talk, which suggests that people are definitely afraid in this region, as they should be. >> reporter: for years, the region has been plagued by violent gangs, started by gang members deported from california. but it's become the main corridor for narcotics coming up from south america, as the big mexican cartels have looked for staging areas here, murder rates skyrocketed. so this is the entrance to the market. there must be 15 bodies here. yesterday they received seven bodies and this morning five more. they get new bodies every day. 80% of them are from violence. they're usually shot, either with a pistol or a rifle. [ speaking foreign language ] >> there's not much to say. i mean, this woman and her mother, who just lost two sons, two of the bodies i just saw inside the morgue, that's the son and the brothers of these two women. there's a human cost to the drug war, and the hondurans are paying it in blood. i just came from the morgue, and there's literally bodies piling up in the hallway. why is this country so violent? >> well, the violence is not actually traditional in honduras. and it has increased as the drug traffic through honduras has increased. so i think a lot of it has to do with drugs. >> reporter: the murder rate here is 16 times the u.s. rate. murder has become so normal here that there are some hondurans who don't seem to spend a lot of time agonizing over it. outside the morgue, i met darwin, who led me to his place around the corner. [ speaking foreign language ] he's telling me that this is a king-sized one for a fat person. so darwin's probably the happiest, go-luckiest coffin builder i've ever met in my whole life. he speaks really fast, so i didn't understand everything, but the one takeaway i got from being here is that the coffin business is booming here. insecurity pervades every aspect of life here. even to visit a violence reduction program backed by the u.s. government, we had to have an escort of heavily armed policeman to patrol the street out front. >> yeah, it's violent in honduras, but that's what we're working on. >> can you ask them how many of them have seen violence? how many of them have seen somebody killed or somebody shot? [ speaking foreign language ] >> raise your hand. >> reporter: it's hard to get a sense of what it's like to live here when you have a heavy police escort everywhere you go. so we found someone who moves freely through the neighborhoods and let us come along. >> so we should leave our phones, money, everything. >> reporter: but first we were warned, no valuables, no phones, no passports, nothing that could get us killed. >> yes, welcome. this is a piece of doctors without borders, so if you want to come with me. >> reporter: laurent skobear moved from the congo to honduras early in 2011 to head the headquarters here of doctors without borders. >> we're trying to tackle the violence, and tackling the violence is quite a big challenge. >> were you surprised at the level of violence when you got here? >> i was shocked. i was shocked. i never knew, when i just reached here, i was thinking, yes, it's the united states here, we can go, [ inaudible ], everything, you have access to everything. but, in fact, you meet exactly the same problems as you can meet in congo. and we're in the capital city. >> reporter: laurence's helped doctors without borders launch a street outreach mission. every day, a team of doctors and social workers walk the most dangerous areas of the city. you're not scared? >> i think we have to be scared in order to protect ourselves also. if we're just going and thinking that it would be easy, we would be very at risk. >> reporter: what goes hand in hand with the violence here is extreme poverty. the doctors without borders street team was giving medical and psychological care to homeless people on a side street off a busy market. it looked like so many neighborhoods throughout latin america. if we hadn't been told, we wouldn't have guessed that it was so violent. >> so what he's telling me that this is where he lives, under this tarp, these are his spare clothes. and he's got -- and this is his kitchen, where you see these three fish being cooked right here. [ speaking foreign language ] and they cook for all of the street children here, is one of the other things that he's saying. the other thing that you notice when you're speaking is that there's all these kids around here. but even in plain view of the cameras, all of them are sniffing glue. because we are the first foreigners, let alone journalists that the doctors without borders street team had ever taken with them, they were extra alert to security. >> reporter: hey, you guys, the security driver just said that it's time to go, so we should go. as we headed back to the van, the market began to close down, night was falling, and the city, now even more dangerous, was getting ready to shut down. it's powerful relief that works at the site of pain and lasts up to 12 hours. salonpas. but think about your heart. 2% has over half the saturated fat of whole milk. want to cut back on fat and not compromise on taste? try smart balance fat free milk. it's what you'd expect from the folks at smart balance. twill be giving away passafree copieslk. of the alcoholism & addiction cure. to get yours, go to ssagesmalibubook.com. it's been called the most violent place on earth. it's a small area of central america where our kaj larsen met one man who's fighting a war against a tidal wave of drugs and murder. >> reporter: a police surveillance camera in guatemala city captures a scene that has become common. a car stops at an intersection at midnight. a man is forced out and shot. it was one of the nearly 6,000 murders in guatemala in 2011, eight times the u.s. homicide rate. fueling the violence, narco trafficking, as mexico's cartels, including the ultra violence zetas, move south. what we're talking about, really, is in many of these areas is ungoverned space, like the zetas are the authorities in these areas? >> yes. >> reporter: we were briefed by a dea agent who asked us not to reveal his face. >> the m-240 machine gun fires a 726 round and we need it where we're going. >> reporter: dodging storms, we flew with the dea in two huey helicopter gunships into a no man's land in guatemala, land that soon becomes uninhabited stretches of jungle, much of it flooded because of the rainy season. soon we were flying over clandestine landing strips, hundreds of them, used for smuggling drugs coming up from venezuela. sometimes the planes crashed, but since one load of cocaine more than paid for a plane, often they were just abandoned. >> there's an airplane carcass right there below me. you can see, right there. it's got some birds on it, crash landed. it's a little flooded right now from the rains, but when it's dry, there's about 30 to 40 aircraft just laying out here. all that were abandoned after they brought the drugs in. >> reporter: after the u.s. helped beef up the guatemalan defenses, the traffickers began looking for another place to land drugs. they chose guatemala's violent neighbor, honduras. and it has become the new front line of the narco wars. >> it's the first entry point -- >> reporter: jim kinney has been fighting that war for more than 12 years. >> that lands, the first point, either by boat or an air track, an illicit airplane coming in. the best opportunity to stop the drugs is at that point. >> reporter: as head of the u.s. drug enforcement office in honduras, jim kinney runs america's first line of defense, with the support of only two other dea agents. if jim's small team can't intercept the drugs when they land, the likelihood is that they'll make it all the way to the u.s./mexico border. it's highly unusual for a dea agent in overseas operations to be seen on camera, but i was allowed to follow jim around honduras. >> i mean, we're out there now, right? this is the wild west. >> as close as you get to it, yes. they're saying 75 to 80% of the 25 plus tons that come through here a month is maritime. >> reporter: the boat we were riding on was one of the intercepter boats the honduran navy uses to try to stop smuggling boats whenever the dea gets intelligence about a load coming in from south america. >> yes, these are all from drug boats. >> reporter: when we got to the naval base and saw some of the go-fast boats confiscated from smugglers, it's easy to see how outmatched the honduran navy is. in this surveillance video, you can actually see a smuggling vote firing on a honduran navy boat trying to intercept it. >> as a matter of fact, last night, we had pretty good information about a go-fast that was coming up that was off the roatan island. unfortunately, we were not able to find them. very can difficult. very difficult. you know, you go out in a very vast, wide area. >> yeah, it's a needle in a haysta haystack. >> reporter: jim says in the last 2 1/2 years in honduras, he feels like he's aged ten years. >> it's frustrating a lot of times, because we a lot of times have the knowledge and intelligence to be able to respond and do things, but because of the lack of resources, it's difficult. >> puts some gray in the old beard? >> reporter: but jim has been making progress, changing a crucial piece of the puzzle here. >> so this is your piece right here, these guys coming out? >> these guys are the vetted team that we trust, that we can pass very sensitive intelligence to. >> reporter: this is jim's vetted unit, specially selected honduran police officers chosen for their skills and their honesty. >> corruption's an issue here, as it is in central america and other countries, south america. they've all been polyfwrgrappol. they're all drug tested and they've all been interviewed. and they've all been trained. we train each one from evidence handling to the tactics. >> reporter: when jim gets a tip about an elicit aircraft headed towards honduras, it's the vetted team's mission to fly to that landing site and intercept it. >> there's a high chance they could get in firefights? >> yes, and they have been in firefights. they know there's a very high possibility that there's going to be some kind of confrontation. >> fuego! >> reporter: when jim arrived in honduras early in 2009, the vetted unit had seven officers. now it has 41. and of the 94 smuggling planes that landed in honduras in 2010, the government of honduras was able to intercept seven, five of which were intercepted by jim's unit. that doesn't sound like a whole lot, except that the total for the previous year was zero. >> is it exhausting? >> it can be. there's lots of long days. you hope it's fruitful at the end of it. looking for financi. back then he had something more important to do. he wasn't focused on his future. but fortunately, somebody else was. at usaa we provide retirement planning for our military, veterans and their families. now more than ever, it's important to get financial advice from people who share your military values. for our free usaa retirement guide, call 877-242-usaa. the other office devices? they don't get me. they're all like, "hey, brother, doesn't it bother you that no one notices you?" and i'm like, "doesn't it bother you you're not reliable?" and they say, "shut up!" and i'm like, "you shut up." in business, it's all about reliability. 'cause these guys aren't just hitting "print." they're hitting "dream." so that's what i do. i print dreams, baby. 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this is one of the most violent neighborhoods in the world. not just in the city, in the world. and the police, while their tactics seem a little heavy-handed, that is their only attempt to wrestle control back from the gangs who have basically overrun the city. >> reporter: there doesn't seem to be much hope in honduras. the murder rate keeps rising. but next door in guatemala, we saw signs of progress. in guatemala city, i met the interior minister. in a region notorious for corruption, carlos menacal has shaken up the system. >> translator: in central america, six out of ten murders are drug related. >> reporter: the drug trade flooding guatemala dwarfs the country's resources. >> $10.5 billion in four years. >> reporter: he says this past year, his government seized about $3 billion worth of drugs. the entire budget of the government is only about $5 billion. menocal says anti-narcotics operations alone won't bring down the who mystic murder rate. to do that, he had to convince the public that murders would actually be solved. step one, create a team of trained the detectives. in the basement of the ministry of justice, i visited the barracks of guatemala city's csi unit. here teams of investigators take turns working in shifts, like firefighters in a firehouse. in this room, crime is monitored 24 hours a day. when a crime is committed, the radios start going off. and then they launch the investigators to the scene of the crime. in the last week, how many times have you gone out on calls to investigate crime scenes or murders. six times? wow. minister menocal says the new efforts are already paying off. >> translator: in the past couple of years, after they began making the police more professional, the murder rate has begun to decline. >> reporter: but it takes more than training investigators. radical surgery had to be performed to fight one of the region's biggest and oldest problems -- corruption. this is the large suburb miksco. population, 1 million. it used to be one of the metropolitan areas in guatemala city. then two crime-fighting programs were introduced. what's yaw technique about this police station, they actually fired 100% of the police officers here and they took all rookies out of the academy. the reason, of course, is because corruption is so endemic, they had to start with fresh officers who had never been on the street. >> reporter: the results have been dramatic. police say that the conviction rate on cases filed has moved from practically zero to 98%. in miksco city hall, i met an energy et mayor who along with u.s. surveillance implemented a camera system that's had a big impact. in one neighborhood, 53 cameras have been installed and crime has dropped by 90%. >> translator: and crime throughout the entire city is down 28 to 30%. >> reporter: this is one of the murders that the cameras were able to solve. >> this guy just jumped out of a van right here, white sweatshirt, pulled out a gun, and now he's shooting. what this is, they took a screen grab prior to the murder that we just saw up on the big screen, and it allowed them to identify the guy who committed the murder as well as that you have this guy in this purple sweatshirt, who actually handed the guy who came into the shooting the gun. >> reporter: in addition to watching the criminals, the cameras are also a way for the mayor to observe his own police force. so when the officers show up on scene, they're required to salute the cameras to show that they're on the job. >> it's kind of fun, right, but in a place where police accountability is a huge issue, to be able to see his officers saluting on the job is actually a huge, huge improvement. >> reporter: the murder rate here in guatemala has just begun to decline slightly. still, it's eight times the rate in the united states. minister menocal has a message for america, the largest consumer of illegal drugs. >> translator: consuming drugs has consequences. every kilo, every gram is paid for in blood in latin america and central america. >> and kaj larsen joins us, safe and sound, thankfully. you look good, all cleaned up, here in the studio. >> no flack jacket or anything. >> it's nice to see you this way. and we see so many narco trafficking stories out of mexico, but to see these images coming out of both gout mallla and honduras, what led you to this story? >> well, i think, like you said, there has been a lot of focus on mexico in the news, and the violence t