Police Sgt Wayne Jenkins is now serving a prison sentence until January 2039. Andrew Beaujon joined Washingtonian in late 2014. Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. I got one officer down. What, he asks Steele, is driving the polices actions? THE SLOW HUSTLE is included in a collection of four gripping documentary titles that debut on Tuesdays, beginning November 23. They didnt trot these guys out for press conferences. Late in the series, she meets with Brian Grabler (Treat Williams), a retired detective turned critic of the department, who makes a Socratic case that the war on drugs has failed. The phones are smarter; the law enforcement machinery is not. The Slow Hustle, which debuts Tuesday night on HBO and HBOMax, looks at the death of Baltimore Police Detective Sean Suiter, who lived in Prince George's County and who was shot in the head in late 2017, the day before he was due to testify in a federal probe of police corruption. Start from the beginning and watch the first episode ofWe Own This Cityfor free. All those season-ending montages seemed to say: No matter how you feel about the end of this or that particular story, the beat goes on. Created by David Simon, this seminal series explores the world of crime in Baltimore through the lenses of both civilians and law enforcement. A far-reaching corruption scandal is the last thing Baltimore's troubled police department needs. It spans dozens if not hundreds of incidents under our noses and theres reasons for that which I try to explain in the book. Eight members of the Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF) were being investigated for a wide range of offenses, including shaking down citizens, filing false paperwork, committing civil rights violations, and making fraudulent overtime claimsas well as rolling around town in unmarked cars while wearing black hockey masks, robbing drug dealers of their narcotics and cash, and then planting evidence on them to send them up the river. There are other theories. The series was shot in Baltimore and brings together several alumni of the The Wire, both on screen and behind the camera, including David Simon and George Pelecanos. Executive producers George Pelecanos, David Simon, cast, and crew go behind the scenes. Crime in Baltimore has been at extraordinarily high levels for decades, he adds, leading to an emphasis on crime fighting and its quantification: numbers of arrests and seizures and other measures. Ive been waiting for you all my life and now youre here and Im an old lady. But lets see what I can do. Whatever happened to the cast? In an act of radical transparency, the Baltimore police department hired an outside investigator to conduct a review. English, Indonesia The GTTF officers provide additional damning evidence. Many residents in the city, especially in Black communities, just don't trust the police. You were filming as this was all playing out in real time. D. is what I would call a true son of Baltimore and a voice of Baltimore. Debuting on Dec. 7 on HBO, The Wire actress Sonja Sohns sophomore directorial effort is, like 2017s Baltimore Rising, a story about racial unrest and institutional misconduct in Baltimore, all of it once again revolving around dirty cops and a dead Black man. With candid interviews from members of the Baltimore P.D., Suiters widow and children, journalists, lawyers and political leaders, The Slow Hustle examinesthe continuing mystery surrounding Suiters deathand the multiple theories that emerge in the investigation of the case, including that Suiters death was a calculated murder hit or a suicide. We Own This City is based on a book by the Baltimore Sun reporter Justin Fenton. We Own This City seems to question not whether good policing exists but whether the current system makes it impossible. Baltimore Police officers found guilty in Gun Trace Task Force corruption case. The conflicting theories on his death speak to stark divisions between the involved parties an independent review board ruled his death a suicide, a theory that the Suiter family strongly resists. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: I got one officer down. What I knew from the get-go was that the crime scene was going to be critical, so there was going to have to be a graphics person on board to help us illuminate some of those details. In the case of [the detective] Maurice Ward, he said it was an accident: he didnt turn in drugs and he realised that nobody asked him about it and then he sees other people around him skimming money and its like, Wow, we can do this and nothings going to happen. And it just escalates from there.. Baltimore Police. But theres a lot of pushback of course. Jensen monitors Gondos calls. The streets, the drug houses, the cops pursuing petty busts to drive up their stats you can almost hear the voice telling you to keep the devil way down in the hole. And the rumors start to tear Baltimore apart. Baltimore and its scandal-plagued Gun Trace Task Force comes into focus in the documentary I Got A Monster, the feature directorial debut of Kevin Abrams. However, in this particular instance, the dynamics at play arent quite as clear-cut as that description makes them sound. That revelation leads to speculation that maybe Suiter's killing was an inside job meant to keep him quiet, or that maybe he took his own life. When we spoke recently, I asked what drew her to Detective Suiter's case. He was praised as a positive role model. Sgt Wayne Jenkins was the ringleader and is the central protagonist of the book and TV series. Suiter died just a day before he was due to testify before a federal grand jury investigating an elite Baltimore police unit, part of one of the worst law enforcement corruption cases in recent US history. The Slow Hustle doesnt deliver a definitive resolution to its central question. At the center of it all lies a fallen officer and the complexities of life in one of the most investigated police departments in the country, where impropriety appears to penetrate a broken system at every level. But these challenges continue and I wonder how we will know if the department has fixed itself. See the full list of We Own This Citycast and charactershere. In HBOs We Own This City, Jon Bernthal plays Sgt. Spanish. Now she returns there with The Slow Hustle, an HBO documentary that examines the 2017 death of Sean Suiter, a widely respected Black police detective fatally shot in the head while on duty. But the GTTFs reign of impunity was cut short when a suburban drug investigation happened to reveal one officers contacts with a drug organisation. In a heightened atmosphere of distrust between disenfranchised communities and the police, THE SLOW HUSTLE brings to light the challenges of uncovering the truth and highlights the devastating fallout on ordinary citizens and police officers alike. But the character functions mostly to deliver exposition and make, or receive, the shows arguments. Suiter is assigned to a new murder case. I feel like the city is a reflection of my own psyche. And Josh Charles (The Good Wife) plays impressively against type as Daniel Hersl, a bullet-headed task-force thug who makes Jenkins look like a diplomat. Two former Baltimore Police officers sentenced to a combined 454 years in federal prison for shaking down citizens in the early 2000s had their prison terms reduced to 20 years each by a. English, The Netherlands 890K views 5 years ago BALTIMORE Two Baltimore police officers are on trial this week in federal court for some of this worst misconduct imaginable. I did not want to initially direct another film that involves law enforcement. Rayam opens up about the GTTF. Instead, its members were convicted on corruption charges. Maurice Ward recounts how Jenkins remained unscathed despite several illegal incidents. How is this going to be investigated? The Slow Hustle exists at the intersection of true crime and social justice documentaries, concerned as it is with a fatal mystery wrapped up in an epidemic of police corruption. HBO doc The Slow Hustle examines the mysterious death of Baltimore cop Sean Suiter, who was set to testify against police corruption and then was found with a bullet in the head. And hes the worst officer doing the worst things.. Here we have a case in which a cop has fallen and ultimately one of the major obstacles to solving this death, this mystery, this crime is the fact that the police cant be trusted. Kostoplis replied: No. What really got me with the Baltimore Rising cast is I saw them speak at a museum and I was like, Oh my god! I cried. At the center of The Slow Hustle is Baltimore Police Department detective Sean Suiter. February 12, 20188:02 PM ET. It has nothing to do with my level of desire. In 2017, Baltimore was rocked by the federal indictment of Wayne Jenkins, a highly decorated super-cop and leader of. English, Russia I said, Where were you? We'll help you live your best #DCLIFE every day, A Bigger Field Awaits Us: The Scottish Soccer Team That Fought the Great War. Actor, filmmaker and activist Sonja Sohn is the founder and CEO of the Baltimore-based reWIRED for Change, an outreach program for at-risk youth inspired by her six seasons appearing on HBOs The Wire. Its her second documentary since 2017sBaltimore Rising, which chronicled the uprising in Charm City that followed Freddie Grays death. His elite unit came to be seen by senior commanders as a bulwark against chaos. Through media arts education, Wide Angle Youth Media cultivates and amplifies the voices of Baltimore youth to engage audiences across generational, cultural, and social divides. But day after day, the revelations keep coming. An independent review board ruled that the 43-year-old detective had in fact shot himself a finding that his family and others vehemently reject. New Study: DC Is One of the Worst Cities for Decent-Size, Affordable Apartments, Baltimore Could Be DCs Hottest New Suburb, Lil Uzi Vert and Ice Spice Will Perform at This Years Broccoli City Festival, Rant About the Books You Hate at This Book Club on H Street, An Ex-Oath Keepers New Book Gives an Inside Look at the Far-Right Militia Involved in January 6, Trucker Convoys Began to Fail Their Way Around DC One Year Ago. The cops once reportedly found a gun and a pound and a half of marijuana in an illegal warrantless search. Baltimore prosecutors want greater flexibility to undo convictions after Gun Trace Task Force scandal. Over the years, as I describe in the book, it lost that focus and was just another unit of plainclothes officers running around the city. Its like someone describing how they first stole money. We Own This City: Created by George Pelecanos, David Simon. Baltimore's history of police corruption The scandal broke at a time of struggle and high tensions between Baltimore community members and the police department. She's also an actor. How did you, as a filmmaker, you know, distinguish between fact and rumor? Director Reinaldo Marcus Green and writer D. Watkins, along with George Pelecanos and David Simon, discuss the importance of accuracy and authenticity when creating this series based on true events. opens, it's "November 15, 2017" and we hear a frantic 911 call about a Baltimore police officer having been shot, and we then get the body cam footage as cops arrive on the scene. Copyright 2021 NPR. Filmmaker and actress Sonja Sohn of "The Wire" returns with the follow-up to her 2017 documentary"Baltimore Rising." The new film, titled "The Slow Hustle," looks to be an equally powerful look. HBO alum Kary Antholis also serves as executive producer; Bill Zorzi as writer/co-executive producer, and D. Watkins as writer. The presence of a local filmmaking community can have a positive impact on citizens and neighborhoods. Long history of neglect: why are missing Black people still less likely to be found? In March 2017, eight members of the GTTF were indicted and arrested on federal charges of robbery, extortion, overtime fraud and selling drugs seized during police operations. In a war, you count the bodies and then you call them victories., Its a strong editorial, but that does not make for a great show. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Sohn is also sceptical. Officers tell me that its a new day over there and everybodys wearing body cameras all the time, which wasnt the case until pretty late in the investigation of the gun trace taskforce. Wood Jr. woke up to find his phone full of thousands of new Twitter notifications. Anyone can read what you share. Over six episodes, host D. Watkins will share his experiences in and out of the writers room and speak to the people who brought this story to the screen. That should be happening anyway. See production, box office & company info, Undercurrent: The Disappearance of Kim Wall, Bad tidings in the Baltimore Police Department. The cast includes Jon Bernthal (The Walking Dead,Show Me a Hero),Josh Charles (The Good Wife,In Treatment), Wunmi Mosaku (Lovecraft Country), and Jamie Hector (BOSCH,The Wire), among many others. Led by interviews with Salons D. Watkins (a Baltimore native), The Baltimore Suns Justin Fenton and WMAR-TVs Brian Kuebler, Sohns film immerses itself in a city plagued by pervasive distrust of the police, thanks to a long history of corruption, harassment and murderthe most recent and notorious example of which was the 2015 killing of Freddie Gray. But it is a pointed reminder that after all this time to quote a series that remains quotable for a reason the game is the game. His book A Bigger Field Awaits Us: The Scottish Soccer Team That Fought the Great War was published in 2018. Bromwich, a senior counsel at the law firm Steptoe, says by phone: People were promoted without any sense of whether they would be capable of managing people. That produces a culture taken to its extreme, which it was in Baltimore by many, that the ends justify the means, Bromwich continues. And I used the investigative journalists and their journalistic ethics and expertise first and foremost as, I guess, the first sort of filter and sieve through the facts. SOHN: Well, you know, that's a really good question because, yes, there was a lot floating through the air. David Simon returns to a familiar beat for HBO, updating if not improving on an old critique. Right now were dealing on a mass level with this lack of trust of law enforcement because of the way they have treated Black folks. 388K views 4 years ago #AlJazeeraEnglish #BaltimorePolice It's been three years since Baltimore erupted in a series of protests over police violence, exposing deep divisions between the city's. We Own This City is based on the true story of the Baltimore police department's Gun Trace Task Force division and the corruption that . On Nov. 15, 2017, Suiter was accompanying his rookie partner David Bomenka on an assignment when he allegedly spotted a suspicious figure in an alleyway in the citys Harlem Park neighborhood. Will members of the community reach out to us? e was praised as a positive role model. Fenton explains in a phone interview from Baltimore: It started as a way to try to do more sophisticated gun trafficking cases. D Watkins, a local journalist and author who shares the view that Suiters death could have been an inside job, says in the film: What developed for me out of the whole story is this whole idea of Black lives really dont matter. All rights reserved. Im not victimising real people if I steal some of their ill-gotten gains, so if I go into their homes and I find $100,000, Ill take $20,000 of it and nobody will be the wiser because these are people who are compromised and theyre not going to complain and, if they do complain, nobodys going to believe them because theyve got criminal records., You take that and you multiply it by a large number of officers who get captured by that culture and what you get is the gun trace task force., We Own This City airs on Mondays on HBO in the US, on Binge and Foxtel Now in Australia, and in the UK at a later date, The Wires Sonja Sohn on her Baltimore documentary: We are seeing multilayered corruption, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. Pound and a half of marijuana in an act of radical transparency, the shows arguments baltimore police corruption documentary. Filming as This was all playing out in real time my level of desire investigator to a. 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