‘We Own This City’ – Official Trailer:

18 April, 2024 Siobhan Marie Day 0 Comments 3 categories

Genre: Crime drama, Based on "We Own This City" by Justin Fenton, Developed by George Pelecanos, and David Simon, Directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green, Starring: Jon Bernthal, Wunmi Mosaku, Jamie Hector, Josh Charles, McKinley Belcher III, Darrell Britt-Gibson, Rob Brown, David Corenswet, Dagmara Domińczyk, Don Harvey, Larry Mitchell, with Composer: Kris Bowers, Country of origin: United States, Original language: English, No. of episodes: 6, Executive producers: David Simon, George Pelecanos, Reinaldo Marcus Green, Nina Kostroff Noble, Ed Burns, and Kary Antholis, Production location: Baltimore, Maryland, Camera setup: Single-camera, Running time: 58 minutes, Production companies: Spartan Productions, Blown Deadline Productions, and HBO Entertainment, Original Network: HBO (2022)

A City on the Wire…

We Own This City is a crime drama miniseries based on the nonfiction book of the same name by Baltimore Sun reporter Justin Fenton. The miniseries was developed by George Pelecanos and David Simon and directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green. The six-episode series premiered on HBO on April 25, 2022. The miniseries starred Jon Bernthal, Wunmi Mosaku, Jamie Hector, Josh Charles, McKinley Belcher III, Darrell Britt-Gibson, Rob Brown, David Corenswet, Dagmara Domińczyk, Don Harvey, and Larry Mitchell.

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE • The astonishing true story of “one of the most startling police corruption scandals in a generation” (The New York Times), from the Pulitzer Prize–nominated reporter who exposed a gang of criminal cops and their yearslong plunder of an American city NOW AN HBO SERIES FROM THE WIRE CREATOR DAVID SIMON AND GEORGE PELECANOS “A work of journalism that not only chronicles the rise and fall of a corrupt police unit but can stand as the inevitable coda to the half-century of disaster that is the American drug war.”—David Simon Baltimore, 2015. Riots are erupting across the city as citizens demand justice for Freddie Gray, a twenty-five-year-old Black man who has died under suspicious circumstances while in police custody. Drug and violent crime are surging, and Baltimore will reach its highest murder count in more than two decades: 342 homicides in a single year, in a city of just 600,000 people. Facing pressure from the mayor’s office—as well as a federal investigation of the department over Gray’s death—Baltimore police commanders turn to a rank-and-file hero, Sergeant Wayne Jenkins, and his elite plainclothes unit, the Gun Trace Task Force, to help get guns and drugs off the street. But behind these new efforts, a criminal conspiracy of unprecedented scale was unfolding within the police department. Entrusted with fixing the city’s drug and gun crisis, Jenkins chose to exploit it instead. With other members of the empowered Gun Trace Task Force, Jenkins stole from Baltimore’s citizens—skimming from drug busts, pocketing thousands in cash found in private homes, and planting fake evidence to throw Internal Affairs off their scent. Their brazen crime spree would go unchecked for years. The results were countless wrongful convictions, the death of an innocent civilian, and the mysterious death of one cop who was shot in the head, killed just a day before he was scheduled to testify against the unit. In this urgent book, award-winning investigative journalist Justin Fenton distills hundreds of interviews, thousands of court documents, and countless hours of video footage to present the definitive account of the entire scandal. The result is an astounding, riveting feat of reportage about a rogue police unit, the city they held hostage, and the ongoing struggle between American law enforcement and the communities they are charged to serve.

Justin Fenton is an investigative reporter for the Baltimore Banner. He previously spent 17 years at the Baltimore Sun, covering the criminal justice system. His book, "We Own This City: A True Story of Crime, Cops and Corruption," was released by Random House in 2021 and became an HBO miniseries. He was part of the Pulitzer Prize finalist team for coverage of the death of Freddie Gray, and was a two-time finalist for the national Livingston Award for Young Journalists for an investigation showing how police were discarding rape complaints at the highest rate in the country as well as a five-part narrative series inside a homicide investigation. He is an Anne Arundel County native, a graduate of the University of Maryland, College Park and lives in Baltimore. Photo Credit: The Baltimore Sun

US writer George Pelecanos attends the premiere of HBO mini-series "We Own This City" at The Times Center on April 21, 2022 in New York City. Photo by Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images

David Simon attends HBO's "We Own This City" New York Premiere at Times Center on April 21, 2022 in New York City. Photo by Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images

Reinaldo Marcus Green attends HBO's "We Own This City" New York Premiere at Times Center on April 21, 2022 in New York City. Photo by Arturo Holmes/WireImage

Jon Bernthal as Sgt. Wayne Jenkins in "We Own This City" (2022) Photo by Paul Schiraldi - © HBO

Wunmi Mosaku as Nicole Steele in "We Own This City" (2022) Photo by Paul Schiraldi - © HBO

Jamie Hector as Sean Suiter in "We Own This City" (2022) Photo by Paul Schiraldi - © HBO

Josh Charles as Daniel Hersl in "We Own This City" (2022) Photo by Paul Schiraldi - © HBO

McKinley Belcher III as Momodu "G Money" Gondo in "We Own This City" (2022) Photo by Paul Schiraldi - © HBO

Darrell Britt-Gibson as Jemell Rayam in "We Own This City" (2022) Photo by Paul Schiraldi - © HBO

Dagmara Domińczyk as Erika Jensen in "We Own This City" (2022) Photo by Paul Schiraldi - © HBO

Rob Brown as Maurice Ward in "We Own This City" (2022) Photo by Paul Schiraldi - © HBO

Larry Mitchell as Scott Kilpatrick in "We Own This City" (2022) Photo by Paul Schiraldi - © HBO

Don Harvey as John Sieracki in "We Own This City" (2022) Photo by Paul Schiraldi - © HBO

David Corenswet as David McDougall in "We Own This City" (2022) Photo by Paul Schiraldi - © HBO

The miniseries details the rise and fall of the Baltimore Police Department’s Gun Trace Task Force, and the corruption surrounding it. The story centers on Sergeant Wayne Jenkins, played by Bernthal, one of eight officers who were convicted on various corruption charges in 2018 and 2019. Due to its investigation storyline, its nonlinear narrative frequently includes flashbacks.

The Baltimore Police Department (BPD) is the municipal police department of the city of Baltimore, Maryland. Dating back to 1784, the BPD, consisting of 2,935 employees in 2020, is organized into nine districts covering 80.9 square miles (210 km2) of land and 11.1 square miles (29 km2) of waterways. The department is sometimes referred to as the Baltimore City Police Department to distinguish it from the Baltimore County Police Department.

Rob Brown, Jon Bernthal, Robert Harley, and Ham Mukasa in "We Own This City" (2022) Photo by Paul Schiraldi - © HBO

All eight members of the Gun Trace Task Force were accused in a federal racketeering indictment. The eight officers—Daniel Hersl, Evodio Hendrix, Jemell Rayam, Marcus Taylor, Maurice Ward, Momodu Gondo, Thomas Allers and Wayne Jenkins—were accused of shaking down citizens for money and pocketing it, lying to investigators, filing false court paperwork, and making fraudulent overtime claims.[99][100][101] The amount stolen from citizens ranged from $200 to $200,000.[102] The probe began when the Drug Enforcement Administration started looking into the officers while investigating a drug organization and later involved the FBI. The officers were summoned by internal affairs on the morning of Wednesday, March 1, 2017, and arrested.[103] All eight officers were convicted, and received sentences ranging from 7 to 25 years.[104] The indictment was portrayed on the HBO series We Own This City, which serves as David Simon's spiritual successor to The Wire, another show that follows Baltimore police officers.

We Own This City is the Featured Television Blog of the month for April! You can expect a detailed critique with a summary of series episodes. There is also a detailed recommendation of the series with the history of the BPD’s Gun Trace Task Force corruption case. There is also a detailed review of the 2021 book of the same name the series is based off of written by Justin Fenton. For the interview, actors Jon Bernthal and Jamie Hector join CBS Mornings to talk about their roles in the series We Own This City. There is also a Top Ten List, and for We Own This City, the list is My Top Ten Police Corruption Series. Last but not least, the Featured Television Blog of the month includes an Official Trailer for the featured series!