(The 2021 HBO documentary The Slow Hustle, by the Wire alum Sonja Sohn, touched on aspects of the case.) The Baltimore police department, recognising that the problem was perhaps guns more than drugs, wanted to have a smarter approach. In January, Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh fired her police commissioner and replaced him with former Deputy Commissioner Darryl De Sousa, who promised sweeping reforms to the department. Im not sure the police have proven that.. English, Vietnam Sohn cofounded ReWired for Change, a local outreach programme for at-risk youth, and made her directorial debut in 2017 with Baltimore Rising, which depicted the Black-majority city in the aftermath of the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray in police custody. There was no specific training for supervisors. We Own This City Review: Baltimore Police Problems, Rewired, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/24/arts/television/we-own-this-city-review.html. Executive producers George Pelecanos, David Simon, cast, and crew go behind the scenes. I was railing when there was nobody railing with me. A unit of the Baltimore Police Department, the Gun Trace Task Force, was supposed to target guns and drugs on the city's streets. That is D.s perspective within the film. Tells the story of the rise and fall of the Baltimore Police Department's Gun Trace Task Force and the corruption surrounding it. Its remarkable.. I was sitting up at CBGBs [music club], the only Black girl with shaved hair, screaming, and I had a zine. 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. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. All rights reserved. It hasnt escaped David Simon and George Pelecanos, the creator and a producer of The Wire, who have returned to their geographic and rhetorical turf with We Own This City, beginning on HBO Monday. 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. With a mission to improve Baltimore through green space and education, Parks & Peoplebelieves that everyone deserves a park as a place to learn, play, grow and enjoy. English, Indonesia / Having thus stipulated, it would also be absurd to pretend not to notice the connection. Created by David Simon, this seminal series explores the world of crime in Baltimore through the lenses of both civilians and law enforcement. Fenton has spoken to many people in Jenkins orbit and made multiple attempts to contact Jenkins in prison but without success. But after meeting [Suiters wife] Nicole, and beginning to see that there were pieces missing in the investigation of Seans Suiters death, likethis is a cop. Andrew Beaujon joined Washingtonian in late 2014. English, New Zealand The HBO drama is based on Justin Fentons nonfiction book of the same name. Instead, its members were convicted on corruption charges. Funding social structures that support the people is just a given. info_outline, Hungary Except, as The Slow Hustle soon reveals, things werent as cut and dried as they initially appeared. But day after day, the revelations keep coming. Its like someone describing how they first stole money. Four of them agreed to cooperate with the justice department and testified against the remaining two officers, both of whom were convicted by a jury in February 2018. 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. The Wire had built into it the distinction between good police work (painstaking, intensive, focused on real harm) and bad (petty busts and harassment to drive up arrest numbers and make politicians look good). African-American police officer Sean Suiter is pronounced dead soon thereafter. How did you, as a filmmaker, you know, distinguish between fact and rumor? His elite unit came to be seen by senior commanders as a bulwark against chaos. Their solution: They sold the drugs and firearm back onto the street. We dont always like what we see but we need to see whats in that mirror if were going to actually present truthfully in the world.. Through his early years on the force, Jenkins goes from learning how to scam the overtime rules to outright larceny. Whatever Happened to Permanent Daylight Saving Time? 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. Premiering Dec. 7 on HBO and its streaming service, HBOMax, "The Slow Hustle" is said to provide an inside look at the Baltimore Police Department by exploring Suiter's "mysterious" death and . English, Romania HBO Documentary Films presents A Blowback Production THE SLOW HUSTLE director and producer, Sonja Sohn; executive producers, Marc Levin, Kary Antholis, Sonja Sohn; supervising producer, Daphne Pinkerson; producer, Mahrya MacIntire. The Baltimore Animal Rescue and Care Shelter (BARCS) is the largest companion animal shelter in Maryland. 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. We Own This City, the anticipated new drama from The Wires David Simon, cracks open the story of a corrupt Baltimore police unit fallen from grace. Rayam opens up about the GTTF. THE SLOW HUSTLE follows Detective Suitors widow and local investigative reporters as they work to get answers in the Suiter case and hold the Baltimore Police Department and City Hall accountable. The film follows Suiters family as it tries to get answers about his death. Baltimore's largest police corruption scandal is in the national spotlight with a new HBO drama. FLORIDO: That was Sonja Sohn. And there was all of this corruption that he was around. 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. In HBOs We Own This City, Jon Bernthal plays Sgt. I feel like the city is a reflection of my own psyche. 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. Supervisors had no incentive to report misconduct by their underlings because, given the culture of the police department, that would put them in a bad odour in the rest of the department.. Sonja Sohn directed "The Slow Hustle." Thats a terrible fucking idea. February 12, 20188:02 PM ET. 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. Actor Darrell Britt-Gibson (Jemell Rayam) and technical adviser Detective Andres Severino sit down together to talk about the friendship they formed while making We Own This City, and how working together opened their eyes to new perspectives. In workplaces across the country, the culture is changing quite a bit. English Det James Kostoplis testified that, soon after joining the GTTF, he was asked by Jenkins to go for a ride. In total, the task . As Nicole Steele, a civil-rights-division attorney, Wunmi Mosaku does all she can to create a character who feels her mission deeply and who chafes at her departments resistance to real change. Fenton, 38, who worked for the Baltimore Sun newspaper for 17 years and is now at the Baltimore Banner, a new non-profit newsroom, says: I do definitely wonder if it happens again, if its happening right now, will I know? Directed by Tiller Russell, The Seven Five examines police corruption in the 75th precinct of the NYPD. Spanish, Brazil To return to our unfair comparison, The Wire believed that systemic forces mattered more than individual failure or triumph. We Own This City instead works as a kind of appendix, an updated extra for Simon and Pelecanoss existing, well-earned fan base. 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. The GTTF further damaged the already troubled relationship between police and residents of Baltimore, especially communities of colour. The Baltimore dialogue still has Old Bay piquancy, and some strong performances kick scenes to life. With candid interviews from members of the Baltimore P.D., Suiters widow and children, journalists committed to uncovering the truth, 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. The Baltimore Furniture Bank is a nonprofit organization in Baltimore City, fiscally sponsored by Fusion Partnerships, Inc. Rather than just railing against the GTTF, Watkins spends time discussing the numerous similarities he shares with one of the convicted officers in order to highlight how Baltimores problems are less about individuals than about the environment in which theyre raised and operate. Kostoplis replied: No. English, Poland D. is what I would call a true son of Baltimore and a voice of Baltimore. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: I got one officer down. Do we extend that to law enforcement as well? As "The Slow Hustle" (2021 release; 88 min.) 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. Long history of neglect: why are missing Black people still less likely to be found? Local hero and cage-fighting super-cop Wayne Jenkins was federally indicted on racketeering charges, along with six other members of Baltimore's elite Gun Trace Task Force. 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. 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. But theres a lot of pushback of course. After Baltimore Police Detective Sean Suiter is killed in the line of duty, the tragedy soon becomes enmeshed in a widening corruption scandal that threatens to unravel the public's already After Baltimore Police Detective Sean Suiter is killed in the line of duty, the tragedy soon becomes enmeshed in a widening corruption scandal that threatens to unravel the public's already strained relationship with law enforcement. WJZ has covered the real-life Gun Trace Task Force investiga. At this point, its a more nuanced game. Let us stipulate that it is unfair to compare any series to The Wire, even if it is about policing, even if it is set in Baltimore, even if it happens to be made by two of the figures behind that HBO all-time great, which marks its two-decade anniversary this year. English, Russia Exploring crime-related stories and the issues surrounding them, the anthology includes: 2023 Warner Bros. Suspicions were aroused that a hit had been ordered to silence him. It is revealed that Suiter had been summoned to testify in the now infamous Gun Trace Task Force trial, an elite police unit that proved to be one of the dirtiest in Baltimores recent history. FLORIDO: The officer shot that day in 2017 was Baltimore Police Detective Sean Suiter. She grew up in Newport News, Virginia, had a stint in New York as a slam poet and recorded an album in London. That produces a culture taken to its extreme, which it was in Baltimore by many, that the ends justify the means, Bromwich continues. While an Independent Review Board was ultimately created to get to the bottom of this, its conclusionthat Suiter had taken his own lifedidnt convince skeptics, especially considering that its final report featured at least one glaring factual error that undercut its reliability. Sohn is also sceptical. So there was something different. It wasnt that we heard about them all the time. Along the way, though, you got a lot of rich personal stories to invest in, which is how dramas with a broad social scope manage to succeed as both art and argument. info_outline, Includes: Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo - Brazzaville, Congo - Kinshasa, Cte dIvoire, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Guadeloupe, Guinea, Guyana, Madagascar, Mali, Martinique, Mauritius, Monaco, Niger, Runion, Senegal, Togo, Germany, Austria, Switzerland What are little things like constitutional requirement such as probable cause or reasonable suspicion when Jenkins was quoted as saying that some of the advice he got early in his career was, Never let probable cause stand in the way of a good arrest? That says it all, which was the law was a pesky thing that you could ignore if you couldnt avoid it. Whatever happened to the cast? English, Thailand But except for flashbacks, the story is set in the latter 2010s. 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