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. Wood Jr. woke up to find his phone full of thousands of new Twitter notifications. 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 . SOHN: Well, you know, that's a really good question because, yes, there was a lot floating through the air. 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. Andrew Beaujon joined Washingtonian in late 2014. Now she returns there with The Slow Hustle, an HBO documentary that examines the 2017 death of Sean Suiter, a widely respected Black police detective fatally shot in the head while on duty. 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. 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, 38, who worked for the Baltimore Sun newspaper for 17 years and is now at the Baltimore Banner, a new non-profit newsroom, says: I do definitely wonder if it happens again, if its happening right now, will I know? Do we extend that to law enforcement as well? It begins with dramatic real-life body-cam footage filmed just after a shooting in the Harlem Park neighborhood of Baltimore. French, French Speaking Africa The HBO drama is based on Justin Fentons nonfiction book of the same name. Baltimore Police officers found guilty in Gun Trace Task Force corruption case. The city had also recorded 714 robberies, an increase of almost 25%. Focusing on the 1980s, the documentary tells the story of Michael Dowd, a former. 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. Canada Sonja Sohn, who played Baltimore cop Kima Greggs onThe Wire and who founded a Baltimore-based nonprofit, directs the film. Really, The Wire isnt the only show the setup brings to mind. But they also have a brash, cocky face: Sgt. You get a guy on a wiretap talking to drug dealers about drugs and then you just keep pulling that string.. The Slow Hustle, an HBO original documentary from director Sonja Sohn (HBOs Baltimore Risingand The Wire), chronicles the still unsolved death of Baltimore police detective Sean Suiter, fatally shotin 2017 while in the line of duty, and explores the ongoing speculation about what really happened that day. And thats also once I found the journalists that were already working on the case, and they were interested in allowing me to follow them. A protest of Sean Suiters death in The Slow Hustle. The cast includes Jon Bernthal (The Walking Dead,Show Me a Hero),Josh Charles (The Good Wife,In Treatment), Wunmi Mosaku (Lovecraft Country), and Jamie Hector (BOSCH,The Wire), among many others. The Bachelor Has Two Maryland Contestants. 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. Spanish, Brazil Theyre up in that supreme court and they are winning. Maybe this is intentional. Who did this? That produces a culture taken to its extreme, which it was in Baltimore by many, that the ends justify the means, Bromwich continues. I think Baltimore does what it did to me and its a divine mirror. By Samuel Sasu April 26, 2022. But this type of casual everyday lying, stealing, misrepresenting information, in some cases framing people its hard to prove and for that reason it often went unaddressed., The misconduct continued despite the outcry over Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old African American man who died of neck injuries suffered in police custody in April 2015. ReBUILD Metro is a community change organization that revitalizes historically redlined neighborhoods of East Baltimore without displacing their legacy residents. Im sure those who are involved in policy making are in the midst of looking at how to develop a more nuanced strategy on some other levels because the folks who are in opposition are playing serious chess right now. Sean!) in an alley in West Baltimore, an area notorious for poverty, segregation and violent crime. Local hero and cage-fighting super-cop Wayne Jenkins was federally indicted on racketeering charges, along with six other members of Baltimore's elite Gun Trace Task Force. Baltimore is rocked by the Freddie Gray protests. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. The two men were sent to prison for crimes they did not commit. Through media arts education, Wide Angle Youth Media cultivates and amplifies the voices of Baltimore youth to engage audiences across generational, cultural, and social divides. English, Singapore / English, Pakistan There was no specific training for supervisors. See the full cast here. English, Belgium Baltimore's largest police corruption scandal is in the national spotlight with a new HBO drama. FLORIDO: Your film really does document the Baltimore Police Department's long history of corruption. Ultimately his death is one of hundreds of unsolved deaths in the city. Suiter is assigned to a new murder case. It wasnt a very large initiative, just a handful of officers, a single unit, and they went about their work with little fanfare. Suiter faces distrust of the police at a crime scene. 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.. But after meeting [Suiters wife] Nicole, and beginning to see that there were pieces missing in the investigation of Seans Suiters death, likethis is a cop. What you might miss is the vivid human tapestry that brings this kind of institutional analysis to life on the screen and keeps it alive in your memory. As Nicole Steele, a civil-rights-division attorney, Wunmi Mosaku does all she can to create a character who feels her mission deeply and who chafes at her departments resistance to real change. 2023 Home Box Office, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Watch these additional moments featuring Sean Suiter's family attorney, Jeremy Eldridge. In 2017, Baltimore was rocked by the federal indictment of Wayne Jenkins, a highly decorated super-cop and leader of. 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. Nobody knew. English, Sweden And with little apparent will to transform police departments (and their cultures of silence and coercion) or the political institutions that support them, it comes across as a deeply rooted malady for which theres no easy cure. 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. Her first feature documentary Baltimore Rising portrayed the city in the aftermath of Freddie Grays death and THE SLOW HUSTLE continues her work focusing on Baltimore and its inherent racial and socio-economic problems. Courtesy of HBO Max . info_outline, Hungary We Own This City: Created by George Pelecanos, David Simon. And I felt that the rumors, you know, also have some validity because there is a history of corruption, though rumors, you know, can't always be proven. English, New Zealand 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. At this point we are less than 10 min into the documentary. I did not want to initially direct another film that involves law enforcement. Suspicions were aroused that a hit had been ordered to silence him. Greenwich Entertainment has just. Start from the beginning and watch the first episode ofWe Own This Cityfor free. Why isnt his death solved by now? Except, as The Slow Hustle soon reveals, things werent as cut and dried as they initially appeared. In a war, you have enemies. That is D.s perspective within the film. English, United States The film follows Suiters family as it tries to get answers about his death. THE SLOW HUSTLE is included in a collection of four gripping documentary titles that debut on Tuesdays, beginning November 23. The crime drama series is based on Justin Fenton's 2021 nonfiction book of the same name and stars . I didnt know how much I had been impacted by it physically until 2020 came and I saw the correlation, she says. I dont know about the soul, because Nicole is the soul of the film, or maybe Nicole is the heart. There are poignant moments at the fallen officers graveside and at an anniversary vigil. 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. At the center of The Slow Hustle is Baltimore Police Department detective Sean Suiter. Adapted from former Baltimore Sun reporter Justin Fenton's 2021 book , the show chronicles the rise and fall of one of the most shocking instances of police corruption in Baltimore's history. Copyright 2021 NPR. But at the same time, this was a police officer. Spanish. Kostoplis was transferred out of the GTTF soon after. His death set off a massive manhunt for the killer, and Suiter gets a hero's funeral. See production, box office & company info, Undercurrent: The Disappearance of Kim Wall, Bad tidings in the Baltimore Police Department. How is this going to be investigated? As he notes, despite numerous different mayors and police commissioners, nothing much has changed in Baltimore over the years aside from the names of those engaging in criminal activity. Police Sgt Wayne Jenkins is now serving a prison sentence until January 2039. But it brought back the visceral sensation of being in Baltimore for the uprising that followed the death of Gray. On Wednesday morning, former Baltimore police Sgt. Obvious answers werent forthcoming, but many came to think that if the latter were true, Suiter might not have been murdered at all; rather, he could have committed suicide, and staged it to look like a homicide so that his family would receive his full post-mortem benefits. Its arguments are bold and impossible to miss. So the federal investigation that eventually brought Jenkins and some of his cronies to justice is no spoiler. (The 2021 HBO documentary The Slow Hustle, by the Wire alum Sonja Sohn, touched on aspects of the case.) I felt alone and I was happy. I was sitting up at CBGBs [music club], the only Black girl with shaved hair, screaming, and I had a zine. Executive producers George Pelecanos, David Simon, cast, and crew go behind the scenes. The Baltimore Furniture Bank is a nonprofit organization in Baltimore City, fiscally sponsored by Fusion Partnerships, Inc. Former members of the GTTF. (And even Pryzbylewski eventually redeemed himself.). He enjoyed the admiration and respect of his superiors and was given special privileges. Tells the story of the rise and fall of the Baltimore Police Department's Gun Trace Task Force and the corruption surrounding it. Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. And we're all not feeling protected nor served. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: I got one officer down. But it is a pointed reminder that after all this time to quote a series that remains quotable for a reason the game is the game. So rumors and speculation ran rampant about what really happened to Officer Suiter, not just among residents, but also among politicians, among journalists. The Baltimore dialogue still has Old Bay piquancy, and some strong performances kick scenes to life. Created by David Simon, this seminal series explores the world of crime in Baltimore through the lenses of both civilians and law enforcement. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners. The Wires Sonja Sohn on her Baltimore documentary: We are seeing multilayered corruption, Director Sonja Sohn interviewing D Watkins for The Slow Hustle. English, Italy What are little things like constitutional requirement such as probable cause or reasonable suspicion when Jenkins was quoted as saying that some of the advice he got early in his career was, Never let probable cause stand in the way of a good arrest? That says it all, which was the law was a pesky thing that you could ignore if you couldnt avoid it. Podcast episodes are available each week right after the latest episode. He says: He was regarded well within the police department as someone who was good at his job, who had this eye for driving down the street and seeing somebody make a movement and it turns out that person has a gun. Jenkins brings Suiter along on a raid. The latter, in the seriess view, allowed crime to spike and in turn motivated the police brass to ignore Jenkinss crimes until a federal investigation exposed them. The Wire's Sonja Sohn on her Baltimore documentary: 'We are seeing multilayered corruption' The series was shot in Baltimore and brings together several alumni of the The Wire, both on. Thats a terrible fucking idea. 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. 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. It hasnt escaped David Simon and George Pelecanos, the creator and a producer of The Wire, who have returned to their geographic and rhetorical turf with We Own This City, beginning on HBO Monday. In practice, theyre all about that brutality and then some. His elite unit came to be seen by senior commanders as a bulwark against chaos. The film will debut on HBO and be available to stream on HBO Max. Like, even if youre a police officer, they really dont.. I think you identified it perfectly. Long history of neglect: why are missing Black people still less likely to be found? Jenkins Waynes. Det James Kostoplis testified that, soon after joining the GTTF, he was asked by Jenkins to go for a ride. I think of Baltimore as my soul home, Sohn, 57, says by phone from North Carolinas Outer Banks. This series may not change the game. And I think that's quite a journey that we're all on here, you know, in this country. They told us not just what they did but how and that was very eye-opening testimony. Whatever happened to the cast? Director Reinaldo Marcus Green and writer D. Watkins, along with George Pelecanos and David Simon, discuss the importance of accuracy and authenticity when creating this series based on true events. 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. It physically until 2020 came and i saw the correlation, she.! Notorious for poverty, segregation and violent crime came and i think Baltimore! Be seen by senior commanders as a bulwark against chaos reveals, things werent as cut and dried they. They are winning by Fusion Partnerships, Inc. all Rights Reserved Theyre all about that brutality and then just... This Cityfor free same name and stars federal indictment of Wayne Jenkins, highly. Performances kick scenes to life: why are missing Black people still less likely to be seen by senior as... Gun Trace Task Force corruption case. ) officers graveside and at an vigil. 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