We Own This City | Baltimore, star of a new series

(Lille) Return to Baltimore, known for its violence. twenty years later TheWirethe duo George Pelecanos and David Simon look again at the police of this American city, with a miniseries based on a true story.

Posted at 11:00 a.m.

Celine LE PRIOUX
France Media Agency

We Own This Citywhich is based on the eponymous book by American investigative journalist, Justin Fenton, The city belongs to us, was produced by HBO. It was presented on Saturday at the series festival, Séries Mania, in Lille, France.

Contrary to TheWirean immense critical success which is long-lasting – five seasons from 2002 to 2008 –, We Own This City will be brief: six one-hour episodes.

It traces a gigantic case of corruption within the Baltimore police, updated in the wake of the riots which followed the death in 2015 of the young African-American Freddie Gray during his arrest.

“It was David Simon who contacted me during the trial. He said to me: “you should write a book and if you write it, we will do a series based on it”, remembers, in an interview with AFP, Justin Fenton. Both worked for the same newspaper, the Baltimore Sunat different times.

“In some aspects, things were dramatized, but for some scenes, which I watched being filmed during filming, it was verbatim reality. It was amazing,” he explains.

When the scandal broke in 2016, Justin Fenton, a crime reporter for his newspaper for eight years, saw nothing coming.

And yet, for years, a handful of officers from a prestigious unit, operating most of the time in civilian clothes, engaged in racketeering and abuse with impunity.

” Like at home “

They extorted money and drugs, discovered in traffickers, kept some for themselves or resold it. Sometimes they themselves placed false evidence, weapons in particular, to accuse people-mostly in poor neighborhoods with a large black population-which allowed them to show better results in front of their hierarchy.

These police “were not afraid of anything”. Hence the title: “the city is ours”, explains Justin Fenton, “they felt safe” and did not think they could be discovered.

This was no ordinary racism case, however: of the eight police officers involved, five were black and three were white, although the main defendant Wayne Jenkins, who previously enjoyed an excellent reputation for his self-esteem -called efficiency, was white.

As Mr. Fenton explains, the actions of the officers lasted for years because most of the victims were reluctant to complain. It’s complicated for a dealer to say that in fact he had even more drugs than the quantity seized, he underlines. But there was also in the ranks of the police “a reluctance” to believe the few people who dared to denounce their actions.

American comedian Jamie Hector, who plays a police officer who disappeared a day before his summons as a witness in this case, has decided not to meet the officer’s entourage. “It’s a very delicate situation. We do not know if he committed suicide or if he was killed, ”he explained, during a press briefing in Lille. He therefore collected as much material as possible on him, such as recordings of his voice, to immerse himself in the character.

This actor, who played a big drug lord in TheWireloved coming back to Baltimore to shoot We Own This City. “It was like you were at home, with David, George, the old team. It was always creative, entertaining and still challenging,” he said.

Asked if such a scandal could happen again in Baltimore, Justin Fenton answered in the affirmative. “Officers are now wearing ‘body’ cameras, they didn’t have them when it happened […] But guys like that will always find a way.”


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