Limited series ‘We Own This City’ is set to debut on HBO : NPR

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HBO’s limited series “We Own This City” debuts tonight. It dramatizes the abuses and real crimes committed by police officers in Baltimore. NPR TV critic Eric Deggans spoke about the project with two executive producers who first teamed up with another flagship HBO series about police in Baltimore.

ERIC DEGGANS, BYLINE: The last time George Pelecanos and David Simon created screenplays about cops and crime in Baltimore, they were working on Simon’s series ‘The Wire,’ a show considered one of the best crime dramas in the history of television. But Pelecanos says he wasn’t intimidated by ‘The Wire’ legacy when he suggested Simon film an adaptation of the book ‘We Own This City’. It centers on how the Baltimore police gun-tracing task force became a rogue unit that robbed drug dealers and brutalized citizens under the guise of waging the War on Drugs.

GEORGE PELECANOS: It’s completely fact-based dramatization, whereas “The Wire” was – some of these people were based on real people, and the issues were real, but it was fiction. It’s really a coda to “The Wire” in the sense that it’s Baltimore 15 years later. And it’s – you could say an evolution, but it’s really a de-evolution.

DEGGANS: Simon originally encouraged former Baltimore Sun reporter Justin Fenton to write the book ‘We Own This City’, which shows how the war on drugs has led to mass arrests and police brutality.

DAVID SIMON: Like the guys who learned the worst parts of policing in the drug war and didn’t learn how to police properly – they’re now majors and colonels. They are the ones who explain to the next generation how not to do the job.

DEGGANS: In the HBO series, ‘Walking Dead’ alum Jon Bernthal is real-life former police officer Wayne Jenkins, then a rising star who lectures a group of new officers on how their credibility in court comes from avoiding brutality.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, “WE OWN THIS CITY”)

JON BERNTHAL: (As Wayne Jenkins) No matter what you do out there on these streets, the moment you walk into any courtroom in this city, your word prevails. And if you get good deals, if you get drugs and guns, if you bring in shooters, then you can’t lose.

DEGGANS: But viewers soon learn that Jenkins isn’t telling the truth. The unit he leads, the Gun Trace Task Force, regularly brutalizes suspects, often stealing their money or drugs. Viewers learn that their crimes are a sad progression from the tactics Jenkins learned as a young officer. His supervisor made him go to high crime areas and arrest everyone on bogus charges.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, “WE OWN THIS CITY”)

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) If we clear the corners, they’ll stop shooting at each other. If they stop shooting each other, the murder rate goes down. And if the murder rate goes down, the mayor becomes governor.

BERNTHAL: (As Wayne Jenkins) So this is all about the mayor. They’ll just lock anyone up, huh?

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) Anyone and everyone.

PELECANOS: You know, they teach constitutional policing at the academy. They teach you what they call sensitivity training. And then as soon as he got out, they put him with the sergeant and said, you know, all you just learned is [expletive]. It’s a real thing. I mean, we spoke to the police who told us they were told to throw away everything they learned that was okay. And now I will teach you how it really is.

DEGGANS: Ultimately, the community distrusts the police so much that it affects the justice system, as one officer explains to a federal investigator reviewing Baltimore police conduct.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, “WE OWN THIS CITY”)

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) But now even though you find the witnesses and make a case, now that you have to get 12 people together to form a jury, they look at you and remember when another cop lied. them or their son or brother. Lawyers will tell you we lost the city’s jurors doing this. I think the police are just lying.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #3: (As character) Because now it is.

DEGGANS: A lot of that was heralded in the series that Simon and Pelecanos worked on in the mid-2000s, “The Wire.”

(SOUNDTRACK FROM THE SONG, “WAY DOWN IN THE HOLE”)

THE BLIND BOYS OF ALABAMA: (Singing) If you’re walking in the yard, you better watch your back.

DEGGANS: Simon, who created ‘The Wire’, brought in Pelecanos, a renowned crime novelist, as writer and producer. They explored how a succession of institutions were failing in America’s urban cities – politicians, schools, the media and, Simon says, particularly the police.

SIMON: You know, we told you. We told you where it was heading. We told you what was – what was valued by this police department and what was not when it came to police work. So that’s what “The Wire” showed you. Fifteen years later, history comes in and says, yes, it’s gone there, and it’s worse.

DEGGANS: Like “The Wire,” “We Own This City” doesn’t provide a typical TV detective story, because while the show details how Wayne Jenkins and his task force are exposed, the conditions that fueled their corruption remain.

PELECANOS: Most network TV talk shows are about making the viewer feel good at the end. In other words, the perpetrators get caught. They are brought to justice. In a way, it’s a fascist notion that you’re telling America, if you do something wrong, you’re going to be punished. We don’t do that. It may sound grand to say we’re telling the truth, but that’s what we try to do.

DEGGANS: And by subverting the typical message of the typical TV cop show, “We Own This City” provides its strongest connection to “The Wire” storied legacy. I am Eric Deggans.

(SOUND EXTRACTION OF “SLEEPY” BY DISTANT.LO)

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