Former members of the GTTF. In an act of radical transparency, the Baltimore police department hired an outside investigator to conduct a review. I can make a movie. English, United Kingdom Scenes for the HBO show based on Justin Fenton's book about the corruption in the Baltimore Police Department Gun Trace Task Force are being filmed outside the vacant Bengies Groceries in the 4000 . But except for flashbacks, the story is set in the latter 2010s. 2023 Home Box Office, Inc. All Rights Reserved. However, in this particular instance, the dynamics at play arent quite as clear-cut as that description makes them sound. How is this going to be investigated? His death set off a massive manhunt for the killer, and Suiter gets a hero's funeral. The program serves men in re-entry, addiction recovery, and veterans returning to the workforce. Visitors come to BARCS every day for reasons as diverse as reuniting with lost pets, adopting new furry family members, joining our foster and volunteer programs, and receiving free and low-cost resources to help them keep their pets at home. English, Spain They connect people in need with high quality used furniture and household goods, helping them to establish a sense of pride and stability. I dont think were losing momentum. From top left, Daniel Hersl, Evodio Hendrix, Jemell Rayam, Marcus Taylor, and from bottom left, Maurice Ward, Momodu Gando, Wayne Jenkins and Thomas Allers. So the federal investigation that eventually brought Jenkins and some of his cronies to justice is no spoiler. Seven Baltimore Police officers indicted on federal racketeering charges Sonja Sohn directed "The Slow Hustle." A detective in a nearby county traces a string of overdoses to Baltimore. Wayne Jenkins, who as the real-life head of an elite Baltimore plainclothes unit turned it into a state-run gang. Despite numerous complaints, Hersl is placed on the GTTF. 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. English, Norway German The Slow Hustle contains interviews with Suiters widow and children, lawyers, politicians and investigative journalists, and Baltimore police including former commissioner Kevin Davis. Anyone can read what you share. In HBOs We Own This City, Jon Bernthal plays Sgt. The editor, Donna Marino, she had something to do with that. 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 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. 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. At the center of The Slow Hustle is Baltimore Police Department detective Sean Suiter. The more I looked into it, the stranger it seemed. I need a unit medic right now. I think you identified it perfectly. Its like someone describing how they first stole money. David Simon returns to a familiar beat for HBO, updating if not improving on an old critique. He was praised as a positive role model. Like, even if youre a police officer, they really dont.. English, Denmark It opens as Jenkins gives a speech to his unit in which he seems to say the right things that beating on people gets in the way of doing the job and that, in the task force, were not about that kind of brutality. 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. 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. THE SLOW HUSTLE is included in a collection of four gripping documentary titles that debut on Tuesdays, beginning November 23. I want to just give the team credit; theyve been making documentaries for 30 years. I got one officer down. For HBO: senior producer, Sara Rodriguez; executive producers, Nancy Abraham and Lisa Heller. Itexamines the corruption and moral collapse that befell an American city in which the policies of drug prohibition and mass arrest were championed at the expense of actual police work. Discovery, Inc. or its subsidiaries and affiliates. The Baltimore Furniture Bank is a nonprofit organization in Baltimore City, fiscally sponsored by Fusion Partnerships, Inc. FLORIDO: The officer shot that day in 2017 was Baltimore Police Detective Sean Suiter. info_outline, Includes: Ascension Island, Botswana, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Malawi, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, St. Helena, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, South Africa, South Sudan, Sudan, Eswatini, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Finland The mission of the Black Mental Health Alliance (BMHA) is to develop, promote, and sponsor trusted culturally-relevant educational forums, training, and referral services that support the health and well-being of Black people and vulnerable communities. He and members of the GTTF framed the two men that Jenkins had been pursuing by planting drug evidence. But the character functions mostly to deliver exposition and make, or receive, the shows arguments. Engaging the journalists was, I think, one of the better decisions that I made. I was like a serious punk in the 80s, she laughs. SOHN: First and foremost, it speaks to the lack of trust that the people of the city have in law enforcement not only in Baltimore, but across the country. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners. She is the director of the new HBO documentary called "The Slow Hustle." This prompted an FBI wiretap somewhat evocative of The Wire. Like many series right now, this one is using a nonfiction story to approximate the power of fictional drama. 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.. opens, it's "November 15, 2017" and we hear a frantic 911 call about a Baltimore police officer having been shot, and we then get the body cam footage as cops arrive on the scene. This malaise, Sohn points out, goes beyond Baltimore and policing in general. It has nothing to do with my level of desire. Bromwich, a senior counsel at the law firm Steptoe, says by phone: People were promoted without any sense of whether they would be capable of managing people. The documentary We Own This City draws attention to the corruption within the Baltimore Police Department. 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. In a war, civilians get hurt and nobody does anything. Jenkins Waynes. 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. Another 156 people had been injured in shootings, up from 115 in the corresponding period. 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. English, Singapore 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 . How, why and by whom has never been solved. Then I thought, okay, heres the possibility of actually solving the case. Maybe this is intentional. The conflicting theories on his death speak to stark divisions between the involved parties an independent review board ruled his death a suicide, a theory that the Suiter family strongly resists. 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. Spanish, Brazil English, Russia We Own This City instead works as a kind of appendix, an updated extra for Simon and Pelecanoss existing, well-earned fan base. Over the years, as I describe in the book, it lost that focus and was just another unit of plainclothes officers running around the city. 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. The Wires Sonja Sohn on her Baltimore documentary: We are seeing multilayered corruption, Director Sonja Sohn interviewing D Watkins for The Slow Hustle. 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. I consider Baltimore to be as much of a home to me as the place where I grew up in Virginia. This low profile helped insulate the GTTF from public scrutiny and allowed it go rogue. 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. Fenton has spoken to many people in Jenkins orbit and made multiple attempts to contact Jenkins in prison but without success. Kostoplis was transferred out of the GTTF soon after. 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. The phones are smarter; the law enforcement machinery is not. So that's sort of like the sieve through which the rumors come through. 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. Why isnt his death solved by now? Det James Kostoplis testified that, soon after joining the GTTF, he was asked by Jenkins to go for a ride. His elite unit came to be seen by senior commanders as a bulwark against chaos. And so being able to make that connection, I think, to those other cases was in the back of my mind. And I have about as much hope that his death will be solved as I do the rest of them. Sean!) in an alley in West Baltimore, an area notorious for poverty, segregation and violent crime. The results of this quest were predictably meager, and it wasnt long before pressure began to mount on Commissioner Kevin Davisfrom both the public and the mayorto find the assailant who killed this heroic cop in the line of duty. Former Baltimore Police Gun Trace Task Force detective sentenced to 10 years in prison. When institutions cant solve their own problems, the people suffer. 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. Im not victimising real people if I steal some of their ill-gotten gains, so if I go into their homes and I find $100,000, Ill take $20,000 of it and nobody will be the wiser because these are people who are compromised and theyre not going to complain and, if they do complain, nobodys going to believe them because theyve got criminal records., You take that and you multiply it by a large number of officers who get captured by that culture and what you get is the gun trace task force., We Own This City airs on Mondays on HBO in the US, on Binge and Foxtel Now in Australia, and in the UK at a later date, The Wires Sonja Sohn on her Baltimore documentary: We are seeing multilayered corruption, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. English, Vietnam Baltimore Police. D Watkins, a local journalist and author who shares the view that Suiters death could have been an inside job, says in the film: What developed for me out of the whole story is this whole idea of Black lives really dont matter. I did not want to initially direct another film that involves law enforcement. 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. But theres a lot of pushback of course. All rights reserved. Filmmaker and actress Sonja Sohn of "The Wire" returns with the follow-up to her 2017 documentary"Baltimore Rising." The new film, titled "The Slow Hustle," looks to be an equally powerful look. Underpinning it all is a Wire-style critique of institutions, in particular a police department so hollowed out by corruption that even the attempt to solve the death of one of its own is met with insurmountable doubts. Executive producers George Pelecanos, David Simon, cast, and crew go behind the scenes. Its remarkable.. Bringing Jenkins and his ilk to justice does not mean Baltimores problems are resolved. Reports showed that Suiter had been presentand involved in some waywith a 2010 incident in which GTTF members, using unmarked cars, attempted to rob two Black men who subsequently fled the scene, resulting in a car chase and auto accident that killed an innocent motorist. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. 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. 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. English, New Zealand That produces a culture taken to its extreme, which it was in Baltimore by many, that the ends justify the means, Bromwich continues. 1 Season | 6 Episodes | TV-MA WATCH NOW Executive produced by George Pelecanos ( The Deuce) and David Simon ( The Wire) -- and based on the book by Baltimore Sun reporter Justin Fenton -- We Own This City is a six-hour, limited series chronicling the rise and fall of the Baltimore Police Department's Gun Trace Task Force. 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. Focusing on the 1980s, the documentary tells the story of Michael Dowd, a former. 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. Right now were dealing on a mass level with this lack of trust of law enforcement because of the way they have treated Black folks. The convicted officers were sentenced to prison terms ranging from seven to 25 years. You know, you cant have a badge on your chest and do things like that.. He was born in 1980 which, Fenton notes, means that Baltimore has been shrinking and struggling for most of his life. The unsolved case also sparked far-reaching implications for a city already grappling with the complexities of policing in contemporary, urban America. 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. Fenton commented: Every officials talking about reform, reform, reform and you think that all eyes are on the police department and everybodys behaving their best and yet this is going on. Jenkins followed in his fathers footsteps by joining the Marines but happened to leave with an honourable discharge just a month before the September 11 terrorist attacks. Baltimore prosecutors want greater flexibility to undo convictions after Gun Trace Task Force scandal. English, The Netherlands Jenkins learns his fellow officers are cooperating with the investigation as the full extent of his crimes come to light. And so it's clear to me this is another way to look at the question of how we're going to restructure a - how we're going to create another structure for protection and safety because right now, I'm not convinced that "defunding the police," quote, unquote, is really the thing because that's supporting social structures that support the people. Exploring crime-related stories and the issues surrounding them, the anthology includes: 2023 Warner Bros. Suiter faces distrust of the police at a crime scene. We Own This City tends to choose telling over showing, however, especially on the investigation side of the story. 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. In April 2010, for example, Jenkins was involved in a reckless car chase that led to the death of an innocent motorist. English, France 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. The Feds prepare charges. 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. 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. A still from "The Slow Hustle" courtesy HBO. I feel like the city is a reflection of my own psyche. The GTTF officers provide additional damning evidence. Sohn is also sceptical. EN. There are other theories. Through his early years on the force, Jenkins goes from learning how to scam the overtime rules to outright larceny. The actor-turned-directors new film The Slow Hustle tells the story of a detective who was killed just before he was set to testify in a corruption case. 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. The GTTF further damaged the already troubled relationship between police and residents of Baltimore. Whats Their Deal? The HBO drama is based on Justin Fentons nonfiction book of the same name. April 24, 2022 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. There are poignant moments at the fallen officers graveside and at an anniversary vigil. (SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "THE SLOW HUSTLE"). Watkins is the most outspoken of The Slow Hustles many talking heads, but even he confesses that anythings possible when it comes to Suiter, given that its difficult to ascertain the nature and degree of his involvement with the GTTF. 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