We Own This City episode 1, “Part One,” details the unlikely beginnings of the investigations that would bring down the Gun Trace Task Force. Harford County narcotics cop David McDougall, played by We Own This City cast member David Corensweet, is a real-life police officer who stumbled upon the case. 2018 reporting broadly recounts (via The Baltimore Sun) the same inciting incident as the series, with McDougall finding a young woman dead of a heroin overdose and asking the man with her, Kenneth Diggins, about where he got the drugs. In real life, however, McDougall obtained the information over an eight-hour interview instead of a brief conversation. Diggins was charged with distributing heroin and sentenced to a decade in prison.
As in We Own This City, Diggins’ information led McDougall and Baltimore County Detective Scott Kilpatrick to street dealer Aaron Anderson, who went by the street name “Black.” As in the series, robbers hit Anderson’s apartment before McDougall could get there, stealing $100,000 worth of heroin. When McDougall and Kilpatrick caught up to Anderson, they found a tracker on his car belonging to Gun Trace Task Force member John Clewell. Like The Wire, We Own This City is rooted heavily in the geography and culture of Baltimore, with even the hotel Anderson was arrested at, the Red Roof Inn, being accurate to the true story. Ironically, Clewell was the one member of the Task Force that was never charged with a crime, as prosecutors concluded that he had unwittingly loaned his GTTF colleague Detective Momodu Gondo the GPS tracker. In episode 2, Jemell Rayam comments to investigators that Clewell was “clean.”
We Own This City also broadly reflects the corrupt culture of impunity throughout the BPD. We Own This City episode 1 shows the Civil Rights Office investigating Daniel Hersl (played by Josh Charles), based on a real-life member of the Gun Trace Task Force who faced frequent allegations of harassment and police brutality but was protected by the department. Not only were the Task Force’s crimes overlooked, the Gun Trace Task Force was celebrated as a model unit within the BPD, just as copaganda TV shows prior to Black Lives Matter often glorified bending the rules to get “results.” Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, portrayed in We Own This City by Paige Carter, even had a press conference in 2016 celebrating a large bust by Sgt. Jenkins’ unit. While the GTTF seemed to be effective, they also relied upon manufacturing evidence and coercing testimony. Once the Task Force’s crimes were revealed, hundreds of cases had to be revisited, with many thrown out.
The 2017 arrest of Wayne Jenkins and other members of the GTTF is also largely faithful to the true story. The DEA and FBI first began investigating Gondo and later widened their net to include the rest of the Task Force. The series is also accurate in depicting that Jenkins was brought in under a false pretense, although in real life he believed he was receiving a promotion instead of being questioned about damage to a vehicle.
The first episode of the six-episode We Own This City miniseries largely sticks to reality, but it does somewhat fictionalize the prosecution side of things. While the U.S. Department of Justice did conduct a civil rights investigation into the BPD in the wake of the Freddie Gray killing, Wunmi Mosaku’s character Nicole Steele is fictitious, possibly a composite of several real-life investigators. However, other characters involved in the investigation, such as Erika Jensen and John Sieracki of the FBI and homicide detective Sean Suiter, were based on real people of the same name. Overall, almost all the events in We Own This City episode 1 were heavily based on reality.
We Own This City Episode 2
Episode 2 of We Own This City skips between several different time frames, including Wayne Jenkins’ initiation into the Baltimore Police Department between 2003 and 2005, McDougall’s investigation into the GTTF, and the events immediately following Jenkins’ arrest in 2017. While it starts with Jon Bernthal breaking the fourth wall and includes some fictionalized scenes, the episode highlights several real-life cases of abuse at the hands of the BPD.
The beginnings of Jenkins’ time on the force roughly correspond to reality. The real Wayne Jenkins joined the BPD in February 2003, after having spent time in the Marines and having been previously rejected by the Maryland State Police. During this period, Baltimore had adopted a harsh new policing strategy aiming to deal with the city’s rapidly rising crime rate. Mayor Martin O’Malley, the basis for the Tommy Carcetti character in The Wire, was inspired by New York mayor Rudy Guiliani’s “tough on crime” approach and brought in NYPD veterans Ed Norris and Kevin P. Clark to serve as successive commissioners.
As depicted in We Own This City episode 2, this strategy involved making mass arrests in an attempt to clear the streets. This approach was also featured in early seasons of The Wire, and created distrust between police and civilians. We Own This City’s events are meant to represent the general trend instead of depicting a particular incident, but they do illustrate how many arrests were made, generally of Black people in poor neighborhoods and without any reasonable crime being charged. In We Own This City, police threaten a man with a loitering arrest for sitting on the stoop of his own home, and at least one such arrest actually took place. Jenkins himself was involved in over 400 arrests in 2005, sometimes as many as six per day. While individual incidents may have been fictionalized, the indiscriminate approach to policing depicted in this episode was very real, making the ending of The Wire even darker.
The incident where members of the GTTF stop a car for a seat belt violation and end up taking $11, 000 was also based on reality. The Task Force engaged in crimes such as stealing $20,000 from a couple arrested outside a Home Depot with no evidence of a crime. We Own This City also makes reference to another BPD scandal when Jenkins shouts “Free Laronde” during a meeting, a reference to BPD officer Fabien Laronde who was banned from city courthouses for filming witnesses and was later fired and charged with assault.
The many abuses of Daniel Hersl really were named in a rap song by Baltimore artist Young Moose, who had multiple run-ins with Hersl. Moose even plays himself in the series. However, it is unclear whether he ever talked to the DoJ or any other authorities, much less the fictional Steele. This is another example of how, like The Wire, We Own This City episode 2 mixes several real-life outrages with fictionalized events meant to be representative of general trends in Baltimore policing.
We Own This City Episode 3
Episode 3 of We Own This City is framed around the testimony of Thomas Allers, who agrees to cooperate with the federal investigation into the Gun Trace Task Force. Allers is played in We Own This City by The Wire actor Bobby Brown but is based on the real police officer of the same name. Sgt. Allers was the former head of the Task Force and was eventually sentenced to 15 years in prison for racketeering offenses, including nine robberies. He was moved to the DEA just as the FBI began investigating the GTTF, creating plenty of suspicions.
The sad story of Davon Robinson is also taken directly from reality, although with some details changed. In April 2016, the GTTF targeted Robinson, stopping him for a suspended license (not a license plate violation, as in the show) and going back to his house to search it. Unlike in We Own This City, police officers claimed that Robinson’s girlfriend let them into his house and not Robinson himself, but the HBO series does accurately depict them finding a gun with the serial numbers removed and $10, 000 in cash, which the GTTF took for themselves. This theft led to dire consequences, as the money was owed to drug dealers who later killed Robinson, as in We Own This City.
We Own This City episode 3 also chronicles the rise of Wayne Jenkins as a police officer in the 2000s. As the series suggests, Jenkins was renowned in the department for his ability to bring in major gun and drug busts and often boasted of these accomplishments. Even the scene where he mocks other police officers while in a line to submit evidence is rooted in a real account from one of Jenkins’ co-workers, related in Fenton’s book:
One officer recalled standing in a long line to submit evidence at police headquarters and watching Jenkins stomp up and down “like King Kong,” berating the other officers about not getting enough guns.“I got two guns,” Jenkins crowed, according to this officer. “I can get another. What the fuck are you guys doing? You’re not doing shit.”
Just as depicted in The Wire, the incentives for bringing in a high number of arrests created police corruption. One of the men Jenkins addresses in the lineup is Michael Fries, a former partner of Jenkins who was cited multiple times for police brutality. This includes the 2006 incident depicted in We Own This City episode 3, where Jenkins and Fries beat two men, brothers Charles and Robert Lee, for drinking bear on a stoop, as well as George Sneed, a passerby who had stopped to watch. The police officers later claimed that the two men had been throwing bottles at them. The police account was disproven by security footage, but Jenkins was cleared of all charges and received no punishment from the BPD.
We Own This City Episode 4
The fourth episode of We Own This City uses the federal investigators’ interview of Maurice Ward as a frame, similar to other stories like The Last Duel that were structured around legal testimony. As in the series, the real Maurice Ward testified that he was selected for the prestigious Gun Trace Task Force but warned about Wayne Jenkins’ corruption by Sean Suiter. We Own This City accurately depicts Ward as someone who already had a history of corruption, but who blanched at the brazenness of Jenkins’ crimes. Ward also claimed that he was concerned about the discrimination practiced by Jenkins’ random stops of Black people, which isn’t included in the HBO series. Jenkins really did claim that he threw his share of stolen money in the woods, which the episode suggests was true in its final frame, although there’s no way to know for sure.
We Own This City episode 4 goes to great lengths to show how many concerning incidents surrounding Wayne Jenkins the Baltimore Police Department overlooked or took no notice of, similar to the dysfunction depicted in The Wire. All of the incidents depicted in the episode are based on real crimes or complaints, including the police stealing money from a duffel bag at the Belvedere Park apartment towers, the robbery of a house on Heathfield Road, and the incident where Jenkins ran over Demetric Simon and planted a BB gun on him to justify his actions.
Baltimore County police officer Scott Kilpatrick really did know about Wayne Jenkins’ criminality from a jailhouse phone call, although he was also aware of Jenkins’ reputation through warnings from other officers and his actions during drug raids in the Baltimore suburbs where he had worked with the BCPD. The 2010 crash involving Umar Burley, one of the most disturbing incidents in We Own This City, also really happened. Jenkins had a penchant for engaging in high-stakes chases, perhaps imagining himself as a Fast & Furious hero, and this one resulted in the death of an elderly Black driver. Burley was blamed for the death, and in addition to facing criminal charges was sued by the victim’s family for over a million dollars. However, video evidence revealed that Jenkins lied about the details of the stop in court and planted evidence in Burley’s car.
After this incident, Jenkins was finally investigated and taken off the streets in 2014 but was allowed back in the aftermath of the Freddie Gray riots. As depicted in the series, Jenkins helped to rescue injured police officers and deliver food during the riots, but he also stole prescription drugs to distribute himself. The incident where he leads a charge against protesters seems to have been invented: in real life, Jenkins asked a supervisor to take on rock-wielding protesters but was denied.
Jenkins’ story allowed him to champion the pro-police culture symbolized by Punisher skulls and “thin blue line” flags. We Own This City episode 4 also accurately depicts Jenkins’ role in leading the police department’s angry reaction to the murder charges filed against the police responsible for Grey’s death, including heading a fundraiser for the charged officers. Overall, We Own This City episode 4 showcases how many real warning signs the BPD ignored while they allowed Jenkins to continue his corruption.
New episodes of We Own This City are released Mondays on HBO Max.
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We Own This City True Story: What Happened & What It Got Right
We Own This City episode 1, “Part One,” details the unlikely beginnings of the investigations that would bring down the Gun Trace Task Force. Harford County narcotics cop David McDougall, played by We Own This City cast member David Corensweet, is a real-life police officer who stumbled upon the case. 2018 reporting broadly recounts (via The Baltimore Sun) the same inciting incident as the series, with McDougall finding a young woman dead of a heroin overdose and asking the man with her, Kenneth Diggins, about where he got the drugs. In real life, however, McDougall obtained the information over an eight-hour interview instead of a brief conversation. Diggins was charged with distributing heroin and sentenced to a decade in prison.
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-1535570269372-ccr3’); });
As in We Own This City, Diggins’ information led McDougall and Baltimore County Detective Scott Kilpatrick to street dealer Aaron Anderson, who went by the street name “Black.” As in the series, robbers hit Anderson’s apartment before McDougall could get there, stealing $100,000 worth of heroin. When McDougall and Kilpatrick caught up to Anderson, they found a tracker on his car belonging to Gun Trace Task Force member John Clewell. Like The Wire, We Own This City is rooted heavily in the geography and culture of Baltimore, with even the hotel Anderson was arrested at, the Red Roof Inn, being accurate to the true story. Ironically, Clewell was the one member of the Task Force that was never charged with a crime, as prosecutors concluded that he had unwittingly loaned his GTTF colleague Detective Momodu Gondo the GPS tracker. In episode 2, Jemell Rayam comments to investigators that Clewell was “clean.”
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-1535570269372-ccr4’); });
We Own This City also broadly reflects the corrupt culture of impunity throughout the BPD. We Own This City episode 1 shows the Civil Rights Office investigating Daniel Hersl (played by Josh Charles), based on a real-life member of the Gun Trace Task Force who faced frequent allegations of harassment and police brutality but was protected by the department. Not only were the Task Force’s crimes overlooked, the Gun Trace Task Force was celebrated as a model unit within the BPD, just as copaganda TV shows prior to Black Lives Matter often glorified bending the rules to get “results.” Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, portrayed in We Own This City by Paige Carter, even had a press conference in 2016 celebrating a large bust by Sgt. Jenkins’ unit. While the GTTF seemed to be effective, they also relied upon manufacturing evidence and coercing testimony. Once the Task Force’s crimes were revealed, hundreds of cases had to be revisited, with many thrown out.
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-1535570269372-ccr5’); });
The 2017 arrest of Wayne Jenkins and other members of the GTTF is also largely faithful to the true story. The DEA and FBI first began investigating Gondo and later widened their net to include the rest of the Task Force. The series is also accurate in depicting that Jenkins was brought in under a false pretense, although in real life he believed he was receiving a promotion instead of being questioned about damage to a vehicle.
The first episode of the six-episode We Own This City miniseries largely sticks to reality, but it does somewhat fictionalize the prosecution side of things. While the U.S. Department of Justice did conduct a civil rights investigation into the BPD in the wake of the Freddie Gray killing, Wunmi Mosaku’s character Nicole Steele is fictitious, possibly a composite of several real-life investigators. However, other characters involved in the investigation, such as Erika Jensen and John Sieracki of the FBI and homicide detective Sean Suiter, were based on real people of the same name. Overall, almost all the events in We Own This City episode 1 were heavily based on reality.
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-1535570269372-ccr-REPEAT6’); });
We Own This City Episode 2
Episode 2 of We Own This City skips between several different time frames, including Wayne Jenkins’ initiation into the Baltimore Police Department between 2003 and 2005, McDougall’s investigation into the GTTF, and the events immediately following Jenkins’ arrest in 2017. While it starts with Jon Bernthal breaking the fourth wall and includes some fictionalized scenes, the episode highlights several real-life cases of abuse at the hands of the BPD.
The beginnings of Jenkins’ time on the force roughly correspond to reality. The real Wayne Jenkins joined the BPD in February 2003, after having spent time in the Marines and having been previously rejected by the Maryland State Police. During this period, Baltimore had adopted a harsh new policing strategy aiming to deal with the city’s rapidly rising crime rate. Mayor Martin O’Malley, the basis for the Tommy Carcetti character in The Wire, was inspired by New York mayor Rudy Guiliani’s “tough on crime” approach and brought in NYPD veterans Ed Norris and Kevin P. Clark to serve as successive commissioners.
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-1535570269372-ccr-REPEAT7’); });
As depicted in We Own This City episode 2, this strategy involved making mass arrests in an attempt to clear the streets. This approach was also featured in early seasons of The Wire, and created distrust between police and civilians. We Own This City’s events are meant to represent the general trend instead of depicting a particular incident, but they do illustrate how many arrests were made, generally of Black people in poor neighborhoods and without any reasonable crime being charged. In We Own This City, police threaten a man with a loitering arrest for sitting on the stoop of his own home, and at least one such arrest actually took place. Jenkins himself was involved in over 400 arrests in 2005, sometimes as many as six per day. While individual incidents may have been fictionalized, the indiscriminate approach to policing depicted in this episode was very real, making the ending of The Wire even darker.
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-1535570269372-ccr-REPEAT8’); });
The incident where members of the GTTF stop a car for a seat belt violation and end up taking $11, 000 was also based on reality. The Task Force engaged in crimes such as stealing $20,000 from a couple arrested outside a Home Depot with no evidence of a crime. We Own This City also makes reference to another BPD scandal when Jenkins shouts “Free Laronde” during a meeting, a reference to BPD officer Fabien Laronde who was banned from city courthouses for filming witnesses and was later fired and charged with assault.
The many abuses of Daniel Hersl really were named in a rap song by Baltimore artist Young Moose, who had multiple run-ins with Hersl. Moose even plays himself in the series. However, it is unclear whether he ever talked to the DoJ or any other authorities, much less the fictional Steele. This is another example of how, like The Wire, We Own This City episode 2 mixes several real-life outrages with fictionalized events meant to be representative of general trends in Baltimore policing.
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-1535570269372-ccr-REPEAT9’); });
We Own This City Episode 3
Episode 3 of We Own This City is framed around the testimony of Thomas Allers, who agrees to cooperate with the federal investigation into the Gun Trace Task Force. Allers is played in We Own This City by The Wire actor Bobby Brown but is based on the real police officer of the same name. Sgt. Allers was the former head of the Task Force and was eventually sentenced to 15 years in prison for racketeering offenses, including nine robberies. He was moved to the DEA just as the FBI began investigating the GTTF, creating plenty of suspicions.
The sad story of Davon Robinson is also taken directly from reality, although with some details changed. In April 2016, the GTTF targeted Robinson, stopping him for a suspended license (not a license plate violation, as in the show) and going back to his house to search it. Unlike in We Own This City, police officers claimed that Robinson’s girlfriend let them into his house and not Robinson himself, but the HBO series does accurately depict them finding a gun with the serial numbers removed and $10, 000 in cash, which the GTTF took for themselves. This theft led to dire consequences, as the money was owed to drug dealers who later killed Robinson, as in We Own This City.
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-1535570269372-ccr-REPEAT10’); });
We Own This City episode 3 also chronicles the rise of Wayne Jenkins as a police officer in the 2000s. As the series suggests, Jenkins was renowned in the department for his ability to bring in major gun and drug busts and often boasted of these accomplishments. Even the scene where he mocks other police officers while in a line to submit evidence is rooted in a real account from one of Jenkins’ co-workers, related in Fenton’s book:
One officer recalled standing in a long line to submit evidence at police headquarters and watching Jenkins stomp up and down “like King Kong,” berating the other officers about not getting enough guns.“I got two guns,” Jenkins crowed, according to this officer. “I can get another. What the fuck are you guys doing? You’re not doing shit.”
Just as depicted in The Wire, the incentives for bringing in a high number of arrests created police corruption. One of the men Jenkins addresses in the lineup is Michael Fries, a former partner of Jenkins who was cited multiple times for police brutality. This includes the 2006 incident depicted in We Own This City episode 3, where Jenkins and Fries beat two men, brothers Charles and Robert Lee, for drinking bear on a stoop, as well as George Sneed, a passerby who had stopped to watch. The police officers later claimed that the two men had been throwing bottles at them. The police account was disproven by security footage, but Jenkins was cleared of all charges and received no punishment from the BPD.
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-1535570269372-ccr-REPEAT11’); });
We Own This City Episode 4
The fourth episode of We Own This City uses the federal investigators’ interview of Maurice Ward as a frame, similar to other stories like The Last Duel that were structured around legal testimony. As in the series, the real Maurice Ward testified that he was selected for the prestigious Gun Trace Task Force but warned about Wayne Jenkins’ corruption by Sean Suiter. We Own This City accurately depicts Ward as someone who already had a history of corruption, but who blanched at the brazenness of Jenkins’ crimes. Ward also claimed that he was concerned about the discrimination practiced by Jenkins’ random stops of Black people, which isn’t included in the HBO series. Jenkins really did claim that he threw his share of stolen money in the woods, which the episode suggests was true in its final frame, although there’s no way to know for sure.
We Own This City episode 4 goes to great lengths to show how many concerning incidents surrounding Wayne Jenkins the Baltimore Police Department overlooked or took no notice of, similar to the dysfunction depicted in The Wire. All of the incidents depicted in the episode are based on real crimes or complaints, including the police stealing money from a duffel bag at the Belvedere Park apartment towers, the robbery of a house on Heathfield Road, and the incident where Jenkins ran over Demetric Simon and planted a BB gun on him to justify his actions.
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-1535570269372-ccr-REPEAT12’); });
Baltimore County police officer Scott Kilpatrick really did know about Wayne Jenkins’ criminality from a jailhouse phone call, although he was also aware of Jenkins’ reputation through warnings from other officers and his actions during drug raids in the Baltimore suburbs where he had worked with the BCPD. The 2010 crash involving Umar Burley, one of the most disturbing incidents in We Own This City, also really happened. Jenkins had a penchant for engaging in high-stakes chases, perhaps imagining himself as a Fast & Furious hero, and this one resulted in the death of an elderly Black driver. Burley was blamed for the death, and in addition to facing criminal charges was sued by the victim’s family for over a million dollars. However, video evidence revealed that Jenkins lied about the details of the stop in court and planted evidence in Burley’s car.
After this incident, Jenkins was finally investigated and taken off the streets in 2014 but was allowed back in the aftermath of the Freddie Gray riots. As depicted in the series, Jenkins helped to rescue injured police officers and deliver food during the riots, but he also stole prescription drugs to distribute himself. The incident where he leads a charge against protesters seems to have been invented: in real life, Jenkins asked a supervisor to take on rock-wielding protesters but was denied.
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-1535570269372-ccr-REPEAT13’); });
Jenkins’ story allowed him to champion the pro-police culture symbolized by Punisher skulls and “thin blue line” flags. We Own This City episode 4 also accurately depicts Jenkins’ role in leading the police department’s angry reaction to the murder charges filed against the police responsible for Grey’s death, including heading a fundraiser for the charged officers. Overall, We Own This City episode 4 showcases how many real warning signs the BPD ignored while they allowed Jenkins to continue his corruption.
New episodes of We Own This City are released Mondays on HBO Max.
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#City #True #Story #Happened
We Own This City True Story: What Happened & What It Got Right
We Own This City episode 1, “Part One,” details the unlikely beginnings of the investigations that would bring down the Gun Trace Task Force. Harford County narcotics cop David McDougall, played by We Own This City cast member David Corensweet, is a real-life police officer who stumbled upon the case. 2018 reporting broadly recounts (via The Baltimore Sun) the same inciting incident as the series, with McDougall finding a young woman dead of a heroin overdose and asking the man with her, Kenneth Diggins, about where he got the drugs. In real life, however, McDougall obtained the information over an eight-hour interview instead of a brief conversation. Diggins was charged with distributing heroin and sentenced to a decade in prison.
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-1535570269372-ccr3’); });
As in We Own This City, Diggins’ information led McDougall and Baltimore County Detective Scott Kilpatrick to street dealer Aaron Anderson, who went by the street name “Black.” As in the series, robbers hit Anderson’s apartment before McDougall could get there, stealing $100,000 worth of heroin. When McDougall and Kilpatrick caught up to Anderson, they found a tracker on his car belonging to Gun Trace Task Force member John Clewell. Like The Wire, We Own This City is rooted heavily in the geography and culture of Baltimore, with even the hotel Anderson was arrested at, the Red Roof Inn, being accurate to the true story. Ironically, Clewell was the one member of the Task Force that was never charged with a crime, as prosecutors concluded that he had unwittingly loaned his GTTF colleague Detective Momodu Gondo the GPS tracker. In episode 2, Jemell Rayam comments to investigators that Clewell was “clean.”
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-1535570269372-ccr4’); });
We Own This City also broadly reflects the corrupt culture of impunity throughout the BPD. We Own This City episode 1 shows the Civil Rights Office investigating Daniel Hersl (played by Josh Charles), based on a real-life member of the Gun Trace Task Force who faced frequent allegations of harassment and police brutality but was protected by the department. Not only were the Task Force’s crimes overlooked, the Gun Trace Task Force was celebrated as a model unit within the BPD, just as copaganda TV shows prior to Black Lives Matter often glorified bending the rules to get “results.” Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, portrayed in We Own This City by Paige Carter, even had a press conference in 2016 celebrating a large bust by Sgt. Jenkins’ unit. While the GTTF seemed to be effective, they also relied upon manufacturing evidence and coercing testimony. Once the Task Force’s crimes were revealed, hundreds of cases had to be revisited, with many thrown out.
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-1535570269372-ccr5’); });
The 2017 arrest of Wayne Jenkins and other members of the GTTF is also largely faithful to the true story. The DEA and FBI first began investigating Gondo and later widened their net to include the rest of the Task Force. The series is also accurate in depicting that Jenkins was brought in under a false pretense, although in real life he believed he was receiving a promotion instead of being questioned about damage to a vehicle.
The first episode of the six-episode We Own This City miniseries largely sticks to reality, but it does somewhat fictionalize the prosecution side of things. While the U.S. Department of Justice did conduct a civil rights investigation into the BPD in the wake of the Freddie Gray killing, Wunmi Mosaku’s character Nicole Steele is fictitious, possibly a composite of several real-life investigators. However, other characters involved in the investigation, such as Erika Jensen and John Sieracki of the FBI and homicide detective Sean Suiter, were based on real people of the same name. Overall, almost all the events in We Own This City episode 1 were heavily based on reality.
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-1535570269372-ccr-REPEAT6’); });
We Own This City Episode 2
Episode 2 of We Own This City skips between several different time frames, including Wayne Jenkins’ initiation into the Baltimore Police Department between 2003 and 2005, McDougall’s investigation into the GTTF, and the events immediately following Jenkins’ arrest in 2017. While it starts with Jon Bernthal breaking the fourth wall and includes some fictionalized scenes, the episode highlights several real-life cases of abuse at the hands of the BPD.
The beginnings of Jenkins’ time on the force roughly correspond to reality. The real Wayne Jenkins joined the BPD in February 2003, after having spent time in the Marines and having been previously rejected by the Maryland State Police. During this period, Baltimore had adopted a harsh new policing strategy aiming to deal with the city’s rapidly rising crime rate. Mayor Martin O’Malley, the basis for the Tommy Carcetti character in The Wire, was inspired by New York mayor Rudy Guiliani’s “tough on crime” approach and brought in NYPD veterans Ed Norris and Kevin P. Clark to serve as successive commissioners.
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-1535570269372-ccr-REPEAT7’); });
As depicted in We Own This City episode 2, this strategy involved making mass arrests in an attempt to clear the streets. This approach was also featured in early seasons of The Wire, and created distrust between police and civilians. We Own This City’s events are meant to represent the general trend instead of depicting a particular incident, but they do illustrate how many arrests were made, generally of Black people in poor neighborhoods and without any reasonable crime being charged. In We Own This City, police threaten a man with a loitering arrest for sitting on the stoop of his own home, and at least one such arrest actually took place. Jenkins himself was involved in over 400 arrests in 2005, sometimes as many as six per day. While individual incidents may have been fictionalized, the indiscriminate approach to policing depicted in this episode was very real, making the ending of The Wire even darker.
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-1535570269372-ccr-REPEAT8’); });
The incident where members of the GTTF stop a car for a seat belt violation and end up taking $11, 000 was also based on reality. The Task Force engaged in crimes such as stealing $20,000 from a couple arrested outside a Home Depot with no evidence of a crime. We Own This City also makes reference to another BPD scandal when Jenkins shouts “Free Laronde” during a meeting, a reference to BPD officer Fabien Laronde who was banned from city courthouses for filming witnesses and was later fired and charged with assault.
The many abuses of Daniel Hersl really were named in a rap song by Baltimore artist Young Moose, who had multiple run-ins with Hersl. Moose even plays himself in the series. However, it is unclear whether he ever talked to the DoJ or any other authorities, much less the fictional Steele. This is another example of how, like The Wire, We Own This City episode 2 mixes several real-life outrages with fictionalized events meant to be representative of general trends in Baltimore policing.
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-1535570269372-ccr-REPEAT9’); });
We Own This City Episode 3
Episode 3 of We Own This City is framed around the testimony of Thomas Allers, who agrees to cooperate with the federal investigation into the Gun Trace Task Force. Allers is played in We Own This City by The Wire actor Bobby Brown but is based on the real police officer of the same name. Sgt. Allers was the former head of the Task Force and was eventually sentenced to 15 years in prison for racketeering offenses, including nine robberies. He was moved to the DEA just as the FBI began investigating the GTTF, creating plenty of suspicions.
The sad story of Davon Robinson is also taken directly from reality, although with some details changed. In April 2016, the GTTF targeted Robinson, stopping him for a suspended license (not a license plate violation, as in the show) and going back to his house to search it. Unlike in We Own This City, police officers claimed that Robinson’s girlfriend let them into his house and not Robinson himself, but the HBO series does accurately depict them finding a gun with the serial numbers removed and $10, 000 in cash, which the GTTF took for themselves. This theft led to dire consequences, as the money was owed to drug dealers who later killed Robinson, as in We Own This City.
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-1535570269372-ccr-REPEAT10’); });
We Own This City episode 3 also chronicles the rise of Wayne Jenkins as a police officer in the 2000s. As the series suggests, Jenkins was renowned in the department for his ability to bring in major gun and drug busts and often boasted of these accomplishments. Even the scene where he mocks other police officers while in a line to submit evidence is rooted in a real account from one of Jenkins’ co-workers, related in Fenton’s book:
One officer recalled standing in a long line to submit evidence at police headquarters and watching Jenkins stomp up and down “like King Kong,” berating the other officers about not getting enough guns.“I got two guns,” Jenkins crowed, according to this officer. “I can get another. What the fuck are you guys doing? You’re not doing shit.”
Just as depicted in The Wire, the incentives for bringing in a high number of arrests created police corruption. One of the men Jenkins addresses in the lineup is Michael Fries, a former partner of Jenkins who was cited multiple times for police brutality. This includes the 2006 incident depicted in We Own This City episode 3, where Jenkins and Fries beat two men, brothers Charles and Robert Lee, for drinking bear on a stoop, as well as George Sneed, a passerby who had stopped to watch. The police officers later claimed that the two men had been throwing bottles at them. The police account was disproven by security footage, but Jenkins was cleared of all charges and received no punishment from the BPD.
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We Own This City Episode 4
The fourth episode of We Own This City uses the federal investigators’ interview of Maurice Ward as a frame, similar to other stories like The Last Duel that were structured around legal testimony. As in the series, the real Maurice Ward testified that he was selected for the prestigious Gun Trace Task Force but warned about Wayne Jenkins’ corruption by Sean Suiter. We Own This City accurately depicts Ward as someone who already had a history of corruption, but who blanched at the brazenness of Jenkins’ crimes. Ward also claimed that he was concerned about the discrimination practiced by Jenkins’ random stops of Black people, which isn’t included in the HBO series. Jenkins really did claim that he threw his share of stolen money in the woods, which the episode suggests was true in its final frame, although there’s no way to know for sure.
We Own This City episode 4 goes to great lengths to show how many concerning incidents surrounding Wayne Jenkins the Baltimore Police Department overlooked or took no notice of, similar to the dysfunction depicted in The Wire. All of the incidents depicted in the episode are based on real crimes or complaints, including the police stealing money from a duffel bag at the Belvedere Park apartment towers, the robbery of a house on Heathfield Road, and the incident where Jenkins ran over Demetric Simon and planted a BB gun on him to justify his actions.
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Baltimore County police officer Scott Kilpatrick really did know about Wayne Jenkins’ criminality from a jailhouse phone call, although he was also aware of Jenkins’ reputation through warnings from other officers and his actions during drug raids in the Baltimore suburbs where he had worked with the BCPD. The 2010 crash involving Umar Burley, one of the most disturbing incidents in We Own This City, also really happened. Jenkins had a penchant for engaging in high-stakes chases, perhaps imagining himself as a Fast & Furious hero, and this one resulted in the death of an elderly Black driver. Burley was blamed for the death, and in addition to facing criminal charges was sued by the victim’s family for over a million dollars. However, video evidence revealed that Jenkins lied about the details of the stop in court and planted evidence in Burley’s car.
After this incident, Jenkins was finally investigated and taken off the streets in 2014 but was allowed back in the aftermath of the Freddie Gray riots. As depicted in the series, Jenkins helped to rescue injured police officers and deliver food during the riots, but he also stole prescription drugs to distribute himself. The incident where he leads a charge against protesters seems to have been invented: in real life, Jenkins asked a supervisor to take on rock-wielding protesters but was denied.
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Jenkins’ story allowed him to champion the pro-police culture symbolized by Punisher skulls and “thin blue line” flags. We Own This City episode 4 also accurately depicts Jenkins’ role in leading the police department’s angry reaction to the murder charges filed against the police responsible for Grey’s death, including heading a fundraiser for the charged officers. Overall, We Own This City episode 4 showcases how many real warning signs the BPD ignored while they allowed Jenkins to continue his corruption.
New episodes of We Own This City are released Mondays on HBO Max.
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Synthetic: Ôn Thi HSG
