True Story of Wayne Jenkins and Baltimore’s Gun Trace Task Force.
After months of inane true-crime television in the form of hucksters and dating-app swindlers, HBO redeems the genre, returning to its early 2000s crime drama roots with We Own This City. The series, from The Wire creator David Simon and writer/producer (and, also, Wire alumnus) George Pelecanos, follows the Baltimore Police Department’s Gun Trace Task Force, members of whom were indicted on federal racketeering charges in 2017, including former leader of the task force, Sgt. Wayne Jenkins (Jon Bernthal in the series).
The series is based on the book “We Own This City: A True Story of Crime, Cops, and Corruption,” by former Baltimore Sun reporter Justin Fenton, which chronicles the task force’s corrupt activities and ultimate crackdown by the FBI. (The same task force was the subject of another recent book, “I Got a Monster: The Rise and Fall of America’s Most Corrupt Police Squad.”) The New York Times noted that the book was “clearly inspired by ‘The Wire’,” a fact that comes full circle with Wire writers Simon and Pelecanos now turning the story into a television series.
Like The Wire, which is based on events and personalities involved in the Baltimore criminal and law enforcement spaces of the 1990s, We Own This City is also a Baltimore crime story that doubles as an American crime story—this one set between 2015 and 2017.
It’s connection both to Fenton’s book and to its television predecessor means that viewers can expect hyperrealism in the story’s depictions of historical events and proceedings.
Simon was a crime reporter himself at The Baltimore Sun for over a decade, work experience that has no doubt given his television writing strong verisimilitude.
Here’s the true story behind his latest, We Own This City.
Although it is never shown on screen, the death of Freddie Gray—a 25-year-old Baltimore resident who died in the back of a police van in 2015, a death later ruled a homicide—haunts the events of We Own This City.
The series pendulums the narrative between 2015 and 2017, two calamitous years for the Baltimore Police Department.
The events of 2015 in the series occur after the death of Gray—the ensuing protests, the resultant criminal investigations into the six officers involved, and the rise in crime in Baltimore following the killing.
The climate in the police department seemed to be one of extreme frustration. The Baltimore police union denied that its officers were responsible for Gray’s death—a belief that was likely held by other officers at the time and is reflected in the series’ dialogue.
It also appeared to be a climate of extreme reservation, resulting in fewer reports, fewer car stops, and officers allegedly turning a blind eye to criminal behavior. These events are all depicted in We Own This City’s first episode where two cops suddenly choose not to arrest a man they had handcuffed.
As in the series, crime then began to rise in Baltimore and would ultimately hit an all-time high in 2017, the other timeline in We Own This City.
In April 2017, the Justice Department announced that there would no charges against the six officers involved in Gray’s death.
A month, earlier, however the police department was rocked by a federal investigation that would end in court—and discipline for several Baltimore Police officers.
On March 1, 2017, several members of Baltimore Police’s Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF) were arrested on racketeering charges. An indictment against them described “robberies committed during street stops, traffic stops, and residential searches; false affidavits and police reports submitted to facilitate their crimes; and massive overtime fraud accomplished through lying about the hours worked by the BPD members”—all of which occurred between 2015-2016, the years after Gray’s death.
We Own This City’s first episode concludes with the arrest of Sgt. Wayne Jenkins who led the task force at the time. The other officers arrested included Momodu Gondo, Evodio Hendrix, Jemell Rayam, Marcus Taylor, Maurice Ward, and Daniel Hersl (Josh Charles in the series).
An executive summary of the investigation into the GTTF explains the significance of the indictment.
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