Jenkins’ twin sun in this universe of brutality and grift is Daniel Hersl (Josh Charles), whose reputation as a rapacious bruiser precedes him. Jon Bernthal stars as Sergeant Wayne Jenkins, the swaggering street pirate who led the GTTF, and became so egregious in his unlawfulness as to shock the consciences of fellow teammates who had considered a code of silence foundational to police work. ![]() Between their behavior and the city’s backdrop, the Gun Trace Task Force almost operated as if their guiding principle was to be one day become totems of tragic systemic failure in a David Simon show. He’s brought his trademark journalistic rigor to such Baltimore-set series as “Homicide, “The Corner,” and most famously, “The Wire.” Simon cut his storytelling teeth as a beat reporter at the Baltimore Sun, and he and frequent collaborator Pelecanos adapted “We Own This City” from the book of the same name released last year by Sun reporter Justin Fenton. Simon has spent most of his television career taking such examples of institutional rot and turning them into riveting, lived-in stories about the people who become imperfect cogs in flawed machines. Even the least galling of the GTTF’s actions - siphoning hundreds of overtime hours, in some cases while on tropical vacations - would be enough to destabilize a municipality. When their reckless behavior threatened to expose them, they would resort to planting contraband, and detainees who objected too loudly were beaten with impunity. ![]() The squad’s near-omnipotence inevitably led to widespread misconduct not seen outside adrenalized dirty-cop narratives like “The Shield” and “Training Day.” During the task force’s decade-long reign of state-sponsored terror, the officers robbed drug dealers and resold their stashes, or in some cases, used the specter of drug trafficking to steal cash from innocent motorists. That track record gave the Gun Trace Task Force outsize influence and latitude within the department, especially at a time when an informal but widespread police work stoppage led to plummeting arrest numbers and increased crime. The hand-picked nine-officer squad became legendary for its efficacy in pulling illegal guns off the street and sniffing out ill-gotten cash like Kevlar-vested truffle pigs. It’s difficult to overstate just how qualified Simon, based on his past work, is to adapt the rise and fall of the Gun Trace Task Force, an elite plainclothes unit within the Baltimore Police Department that imploded under federal civil rights scrutiny following the death of Freddie Gray while in the BPD’s custody. ![]() Or, as “ We Own This City,” HBO’s latest collaboration with co-creators David Simon and George Pelecanos, suggests, such a drama about real American policing is possible with a fortuitous combination of the right material and a writer perfectly equipped to breathe life into it. Perhaps current events involving, for example, police-involved shootings are too sad, too fresh, too morally muddled, or too lacking in resolution to be molded into an eight-episode drama with a royal-flush ensemble. ![]() “When They See Us” was, nevertheless, a period piece that echoed contemporary cases, but lacked the punch of a story ripped from recent headlines. That show drew its power from how relevant the issues it explored remain three decades since the real-life incident that inspired it. The recent exception is “When They See Us,” Ava DuVernay’s gut-wrenching retelling of the Central Park Five case, which remains a potent example of how myopic and flawed police investigations can ruin lives. (The quality of such well-intentioned episodes generally ranges between “Not totally humiliating” and “May induce cringe spasms.”) The problem of dysfunctional policing and its disproportionate impact on communities of color has been largely ignored by scripted television, save for occasional arcs on the fictional police dramas whose rose-tinted views of police work have contributed to that very issue. And yet for as many as there are, notably few have drawn from what is arguably America’s most consequential (and most intractable) criminal justice phenomenon. Scripted limited-run dramas inspired by recent, buzzy true-crime tales have recently oversaturated the market.
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