Exposing What Happened to The Next Era of Policing in Baltimore, David Simon Describes WE OWN THIS CITY as a ‘Coda’ to THE WIRE

By BILL HARRIS Special to The Lede There’s a scene in the first episode of HBO’s WE OWN THIS CITY – debuting Monday, April 25, only on Crave – that immediately sticks in the memory. In just 60 seconds, it highlights many of the challenges surrounding the fraught relationship between the police and the public. Two Baltimore Police Department patrol cars have converged on a civilian vehicle, and two policemen have a man – presumably the driver of the car – pinned to the sidewalk, face-down and on his stomach. The cops are trying to handcuff the man’s hands behind his back. But an agitated crowd has gathered, almost all of them holding up cell-phone cameras. Two other policemen at the scene are trying to hold back the civilians, but they’re screaming and yelling, taunting the police, hurling insults. The two cops on the ground confer for a few seconds, and finally one of them says, “(Bleep) this, it’s not worth it.” They get up, and let the man go. The cop turns to the crowd and angrily shouts, “police yourselves,” before the squad cars drive away. There’s so much to unpack there, and WE OWN THIS CITY gives it a good try, from the ground up. Based on a nonfiction book of the same name by Baltimore Sun reporter Justin Fenton, WE OWN THIS CITY was developed, written, and executive produced by David Simon and George Pelecanos. Simon, of course, was the creator of HBO’s legendary THE WIRE – also on Crave, and also set in Baltimore – and he had an interesting take when asked about the afore-mentioned scene. “One of the revolutions since we wrote THE WIRE is this thing,” said Simon, holding up his cell phone during a virtual panel interview. “It’s the cameras in these. It used to be whatever happened on the street corner came down to my word against yours. Now it’s my word against whoever happens to have a camera. And so a lot of the most egregious stuff, that was always there … any patrolman on his beat, it’s a little bit of a dictatorship. You’re down to his words and his ethic. But not anymore. Technology has reached the point where we now see what bad police work is on a routine basis, and there’s proof of it. And so either police departments are going to figure out a way to do the job right, or we’re all in trouble.” Simon described WE OWN THIS CITY – which is a six-part limited series with a large ensemble cast that includes Jon Bernthal, Wunmi Mosaku, Jamie Hector, and Josh Charles – as a “coda” to THE WIRE, which originally aired from 2002 to 2008. While Simon still believes that THE WIRE was very realistic for its time period, WE OWN THIS CITY represents what happened in the subsequent era of policing in Baltimore. “Well, it’s a true story, this is where the scandal happened to the Gun Trace Task Force,” Simon said. “But Baltimore specifically – and I think this is common to many American cities – over the last 30 years they committed to fighting the drug war, to an aggressive drug prohibition, and to mass arrest as a result of that drug war. And as a consequence, it destroyed police work in a lot of fundamental ways.” Simon continued, “The police officers who we’re writing about now (in WE OWN THIS CITY), they weren’t police officers in 2007 when we wrote the last pages of THE WIRE. You’re effectively looking at the next generation of what drug warring, and mass arrest, and a complete failure of policy did to the Baltimore department. To make an analogy to THE WIRE, people like Carver (Seth Gilliam) and Herc (Domenick Lombardozzi), they were being trained by people who still had some residual sense of what a police department was supposed to be. Now, a generation later, the Hercs and the Carvers, they’re the supervisors. They’re the people who are training the next generation. And it has become more profoundly dysfunctional and dystopian in one or two generations of policing.” billharristv@gmail.com @billharris_tv