Police stuffing their pockets and rationalizing it as their just dues was the subject of The Shield (itself inspired by a Los Angeles police scandal), which celebrates its own 20-year anniversary this spring. He noted that the location of the lethal gunshot indicated that it could have been a self-inflicted wound, but later remarked that if Suiter was trying to cover up a suicide, he wouldnt have shot himself in the head; instead, he would have fired at his chest, which would have made it resemble a murder. 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. 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. Spanish, Brazil Former Baltimore Police Gun Trace Task Force detective sentenced to 10 years in prison. 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. English, Hong Kong I can make a movie. Next June it will be 20 years since The Wire began its sprawling Dickensian portrait of Baltimore, Maryland, as a proxy for the decline and fall of the American empire. English, New Zealand She comments: Everybody walks away from the film seeing that the suicide implication is pretty serious and, if youre going to imply that, then youd better have really stiff, unshakeable evidence. 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. Jenkins brings Suiter along on a raid. I said, Where were you? There are other theories. So to me, that was a microcosm of the macrocosm. The Feds prepare charges. Many residents in the city, especially in Black communities, just don't trust the police. 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. I Got A Monster (2023) Documentary Official Trailer In March of 2017, America's deadliest city was rocked by one of the nation's biggest Police corruption scandals. SOHN: Well, you know, that's a really good question because, yes, there was a lot floating through the air. The unsolved case also sparked far-reaching implications for a city already grappling with the complexities of policing in contemporary, urban America. Sonja, thank you for joining us. Oh, Lord. Fenton explains in a phone interview from Baltimore: It started as a way to try to do more sophisticated gun trafficking cases. The revelation that Suiter was granted limited immunity for testifying didnt clear anything up either; the fact remains that its conceivable he was executed for planning to rat out his friends, shot in a random skirmish gone wrong, or killed by his own hand in order to avoid facing future legal prosecution. Many residents in the city, especially in Black communities, just don't trust the. English, India But the spirit of those protests also seems reflected in this new story. 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. THE SLOW HUSTLE includes insightful commentary from journalists who remain determined to speak truth to power, including Justin Fenton, author of We Own This City: A True Story of Crime, Cops and Corruption and D. Watkins, author of We Speak for Ourselves: How Woke Culture Prohibits Progress who believes the shooting death of Suiter could have been an inside job. I think of Baltimore as my soul home, Sohn, 57, says by phone from North Carolinas Outer Banks. Greenwich Entertainment has just. English, Taiwan We Own This City does not do much to explain Jenkins or complicate his villainy, but it is insightful about how a bad cop learns to be bad more effectively (and how he makes his colleagues worse). All rights reserved. English, Malaysia Maurice Ward recounts how Jenkins remained unscathed despite several illegal incidents. The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. With no reliable eyewitnesses to the crime, a harried if largely clueless search ensued, most of it predicated on a generic description of a Black man in a dark jacket with a white stripe. In July of 2022, the lead investigator into Sean Suiter's death, Sgt James Lloyd was sentenced to one year in jail for using his fellow policemen to harass a contractor working on his home. Whats the mission?, Exactly. Jenkins duly tested his colleagues willingness to put personal loyalty to him above their oaths to uphold the law. 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 Jenkins name appears in the opening shot of We Own This City, an HBO drama that chronicles the rise and fall of the Baltimore police departments gun trace taskforce (GTTF), described in an independent report as the most shocking corruption scandal in Baltimores history. 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 . Focusing on the 1980s, the documentary tells the story of Michael Dowd, a former. So rumors and speculation ran rampant about what really happened to Officer Suiter, not just among residents, but also among politicians, among journalists. And we're all not feeling protected nor served. Jenkins Waynes. Start from the beginning and watch the first episode ofWe Own This Cityfor free. 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 Georges 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. 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. 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. We Own This City Review: Baltimore Police Problems, Rewired, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/24/arts/television/we-own-this-city-review.html. Ive been waiting for you all my life and now youre here and Im an old lady. But lets see what I can do. FLORIDO: Your film really does document the Baltimore Police Department's long history of corruption. He enjoyed the admiration and respect of his superiors and was given special privileges. Rayam opens up about the GTTF. From top left, Daniel Hersl, Evodio Hendrix, Jemell Rayam, Marcus Taylor, and from bottom left, Maurice Ward, Momodu Gando, Wayne Jenkins and Thomas Allers. They didnt trot these guys out for press conferences. The film follows Suiters family as it tries to get answers about his death. We Own This City is based on a book by the Baltimore Sun reporter Justin Fenton. I dont know about the soul, because Nicole is the soul of the film, or maybe Nicole is the heart. Will members of the community reach out to us? Baltimore prosecutors want greater flexibility to undo convictions after Gun Trace Task Force scandal. You were filming as this was all playing out in real time. 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. The film will debut on HBO and be available to stream on HBO Max. But unlike that venerated saga, We Own This City is based on the true story told in the journalist Justin Fentons nonfiction book of the same name. African-American police officer Sean Suiter is pronounced dead soon thereafter. English See the full cast here. 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.. English, Romania 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. Sonja Sohn, who played Baltimore cop Kima Greggs onThe Wire and who founded a Baltimore-based nonprofit, directs the film. English, Korea I want to just give the team credit; theyve been making documentaries for 30 years. The Wires Sonja Sohn on her Baltimore documentary: We are seeing multilayered corruption, Director Sonja Sohn interviewing D Watkins for The Slow Hustle. 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. The creators, cast, and crew discuss the rigorous research and attention to detail that went into bringing this true story to life in Baltimore. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. I was asked by an HBO executive if I was interested in pursuing this topic, if maybe there was a certain kind of perspective or access that I had to offer. Spanish, Colombia The city knows that Suiter was going to testify against a group of corrupt cops and there is this history of corruption in the police department in Baltimore, then that lack of trust is amplified throughout this city., So the first theory that folks are thinking is, Of course you guys killed him. Fenton comments: We have years and years of lawsuits, of complaints, of opportunities to catch them and it was this suburban drug investigation that led to them getting caught. Sohn was at home in North Carolina when George Floyd, a Black man, was murdered by a white police officer in Minneapolis last year. The true story of the Baltimore Gun Trace Task Force. What it does offer, however, is a forlorn perspective on a major metropolis whose police force has so betrayed the publics trust that the truth is now impossible to determineand, consequently, cynicism reigns supreme regarding the powers-that-be. 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 Seven Five, also known as Seven Five Precinct, is a 2014 documentary directed by Tiller Russell, and produced by Eli Holzman, Aaron Saidman, and Sheldon Yellen.The film looks at police corruption in the 75th precinct of the New York Police Department during the 1980s. 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. It begins with dramatic real-life body-cam footage filmed just after a shooting in the Harlem Park neighborhood of Baltimore. (And even Pryzbylewski eventually redeemed himself.). And hes the worst officer doing the worst things.. I did not want to initially direct another film that involves law enforcement. To return to our unfair comparison, The Wire believed that systemic forces mattered more than individual failure or triumph. THE SLOW HUSTLE, a feature documentary directed by Sonja Sohn (HBOs Baltimore Rising, The Wire), chronicles the still unsolved death of Baltimore police detective Sean Suiter, fatally shot in the head in 2017 while in the line of duty, and explores the ongoing speculation about what really happened that day. Sgt Wayne Jenkins was the ringleader and is the central protagonist of the book and TV series. But day after day, the revelations keep coming. Canada Includes: Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo - Brazzaville, Congo - Kinshasa, Cte d'Ivoire, Djibouti . Maryland State Senator Jill P. Carter helps contextualize some of the social and political misdeeds that have led to an environment that so easily breeds institutional misconduct. Six of the eight arrested pleaded guilty to the charges. I had my moment of doing all of that. It found an extended institutional failure of the police departments internal affairs along with broad supervisory breakdowns. I was like a serious punk in the 80s, she laughs. Ultimately, the journey reveals how theculture of corruption within the ranks of the Baltimore police forcecontributed to the destruction of the publics trust and impacted the police departments ability to solve a shooting deathof one of its own. You know, I think we're already, across the country, not trusting our law enforcement. English, United Kingdom For HBO: senior producer, Sara Rodriguez; executive producers, Nancy Abraham and Lisa Heller. Spanish, Mexico Like, even if youre a police officer, they really dont.. English, Norway See production, box office & company info, Undercurrent: The Disappearance of Kim Wall, Bad tidings in the Baltimore Police Department. 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. THE SLOW HUSTLE, a feature documentary directed by Sonja Sohn (HBO's "Baltimore Rising", "The Wire"), chronicles the still unsolved death of Baltimore police detective Sean Suiter, fatally shot in the head in 2017 while in the line of duty, and explores the ongoing speculation about what really happened that day. 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. They were working in the shadows, and deployed by the police department as another tool to roam the streets looking for guns.. English, Belgium In April 2010, for example, Jenkins was involved in a reckless car chase that led to the death of an innocent motorist. That is the rumour that sweeps like a wildfire through the city and the fact thats the first theory that erupts says something on a larger scale about what could happen if the police dont get their act together and regain the trust of the people., Sohn adds: To me, what Nicole [Suiters widow] and the family are going through is the microcosmic example of what is happening to all of us, that when public institutions and structures dont get their act together, the people suffer and, in this instance, the family suffers.. How do we measure that, how do we quantify that, especially given the deep-seated bad feelings about this department?. Tells the story of the rise and fall of the Baltimore Police Department's Gun Trace Task Force and the corruption surrounding it. The cops once reportedly found a gun and a pound and a half of marijuana in an illegal warrantless search. The cast and crew explore Baltimore as a character, touching on the real people and locations portrayed in the series. At the center of The Slow Hustle is Baltimore Police Department detective Sean Suiter. Former members of the GTTF. Two Baltimore plainclothes police detectives were convicted Monday of racketeering, robbery and fraud in a trial involving a wide range of criminal . HBOs We Own This City Production team is proud to be working with many local Baltimore non-profits to create positive change in the communities where we filmed. THE SLOW HUSTLE debuts TUESDAY, DECEMBER 7 (8:00-9:30 p.m. ET/PT). D. is what I would call a true son of Baltimore and a voice of Baltimore. And there was all of this corruption that he was around. Director Sonja Sohn Stars Umar Burley Jill Carter Kevin Davis You know, it took a minute to gain their trust. 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