HBO’s We Own This City chronicles the scandal that rocked the Baltimore Police Department and took down the elite Gun Trace Task Force. The limited series, which just launched its official trailer, is based on reporter Justin Fenton’s non-fiction book We Own This City: A True Story of Crime, Cops, and Corruption and will premiere on Monday, April 25, 2022 at 9pm ET/PT.
The Wire‘s creator David Simon and writer/producer George Pelecanos created We Own This City, with the new limited series marking their return to Baltimore. Simon and Pelecanos reunited with The Wire‘s executive producers Nina K. Noble and Ed Burns, as well as co-executive producer William F. Zorzi, for the series. Plus, former The Wire cast members Jamie Hector, Darrell Britt-Gibson, Domenick Lombardozzi, Trey Chaney, Delaney Williams, Jermaine Crawford, Anwan Glover, Chris Clanton, Nathan Corbett, Maria Broom, Susan Rome, and Michael Salconi also appear in the gritty drama.
Pelecanos, Simon, Burns, Zorzi and D. Watkins wrote the limited series with Reinaldo Marcus Green directing and executive producing.
We Own This City Synopsis and Character Descriptions, Courtesy of HBO:
In the 2000s, the Baltimore Police Department struggled to respond to crime with meaningful police work, giving itself over to mass arrest and drug warring instead. We Own This City shows how the department’s desperate reliance on statistics over substance eventually led to the inability of department officials to supervise the Gun Trace Task Force and the further inability of the department to discipline rogue police.
At the time of the GTTF scandal in 2017, though there were numerous indications of corruption within several plainclothes units going back almost a decade, Baltimore police commanders held to the belief that any street unit that could bring in guns and drugs consistently had to be championed and protected. We Own This City depicts the inevitable corruption of a unit given this carte blanche.
- Jon Bernthal as Sgt. Wayne Jenkins of the Baltimore Police Department, perhaps the central figure in the sprawling federal corruption case that centered on the agency’s Gun Trace Task Force, a plainclothes unit that went completely rogue and began hunting and robbing citizens and drug dealers alike as decades of a relentless drug war and mass incarceration in Baltimore spun wildly out of control.
- Wunmi Mosaku as Nicole Steele, an attorney assigned to the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, which was investigating policing practices in Baltimore prior to the Gun Trace Task Force criminal investigation. Focused on creating a voluntary, monitored federal consent decree aimed at reform, Steele’s work centers on the systemic reasons police corruption and bad behavior are excused by Baltimore City prosecutors, judges and the police department itself.
- Jamie Hector as Sean M. Suiter, a Baltimore City Homicide detective who was caught up in the GTTF case and called to testify before a federal grand jury. Tragically, Suiter finds he can’t outrun his past.
- McKinley Belcher III as Momodu “G Money” Gondo, an 11-year BPD veteran and member of the Gun Trace Task Force, implicated in robberies, overtime fraud and other corrupt acts. He was involved in protecting a heroin operation run by Antonio “Brill” Shropshire. Gondo served as an information line and protector to Shropshire, and took little effort to hide this connection.
- Darrell Britt-Gibson as Jemell Rayam, one of the most brazen offenders caught up in the GTTF probe. Rayam committed racketeering, extortion, overtime fraud, robberies and unlawful detainments; entered residences without a warrant; and was involved in three shootings that resulted in one fatality. Over the years, he was targeted in multiple investigations by the Internal Affairs Department but suffered few consequences.
- Josh Charles as Daniel Hersl, a cocky, swaggering cop known amongst Baltimore residents for his casual brutality and was the subject of multiple citizen complaints. Hersl was effectively banned from the Eastern District before his move to the GTTF.
- Dagmara Domińczyk as Erika Jensen, a New York native who, compelled by the 9-11 terrorism to join the Bureau, conducted the federal investigation into the corrupt GTTF officers along with Task Force Officer John Sieracki.
- Rob Brown as Maurice Ward, another plainclothesman with the Gun Trace Task Force, who participated in many of the robberies, thefts and illegal activities of the unit, but was bothered by that participation throughout, sometimes tossing away the proceeds from the crimes. When confronted by the federal investigation and charged with the rest of the unit, he was among the first to cooperate unequivocally with prosecutors.
- Don Harvey as John Sieracki, a second-generation city cop assigned to the public corruption task force and working out of the FBI’s office in Woodlawn. Sieracki provided the federal investigation key knowledge of the BPD and access to its databases.
- David Corenswet as David McDougall, a veteran investigator with the Harford County Narcotics Task Force. McDougall and Detective Scott Kilpatrick, his colleague in neighboring Baltimore County’s Narcotics Unit, began the casework on drug overdoses that set the GTTF probe in motion.
- Larry Mitchell as Scott Kilpatrick, a veteran investigator with the Baltimore County Narcotics Task Force. Kilpatrick and Detective David McDougall, his colleague in neighboring Harford County’s Narcotics Unit, began the casework on drug overdoses that set the GTTF probe in motion.
- Ian Duff as Ahmed Jackson, a former D.O.J. trial attorney who is tired of criminal prosecutions and transferred to the Office of Civil Rights. Jackson is newly assigned to Nicole Steele’s team and is mentored by her as they investigate the systemic policing issues in Baltimore.
- Delaney Williams as Kevin Davis, the Police Commissioner hired after the unrest following Freddie Gray’s death, who is caught between the proverbial rock and several hard places, unable to reform the Baltimore City police department and please City Hall, community leaders, the police union, and his rank and file officers.
- Lucas Van Engen as Leo Wise, a veteran federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s office in Baltimore and the lead prosecutor assigned to the Gun Trace Task Force case.
