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NOW AN HBO SERIES FROM THE WIRE CREATOR DAVID SIMON AND GEORGE PELECANOS
“A work of journalism that not only chronicles the rise and fall of a corrupt police unit but can stand as the inevitable coda to the half-century of disaster that is the American drug war.”—David Simon
Baltimore, 2015. Riots are erupting across the city as citizens demand justice for Freddie Gray, a twenty-five-year-old Black man who has died under suspicious circumstances while in police custody. Drug and violent crime are surging, and Baltimore will reach its highest murder count in more than two decades: 342 homicides in a single year, in a city of just 600,000 people. Facing pressure from the mayor’s office—as well as a federal investigation of the department over Gray’s death—Baltimore police commanders turn to a rank-and-file hero, Sergeant Wayne Jenkins, and his elite plainclothes unit, the Gun Trace Task Force, to help get guns and drugs off the street.
But behind these new efforts, a criminal conspiracy of unprecedented scale was unfolding within the police department. Entrusted with fixing the city’s drug and gun crisis, Jenkins chose to exploit it instead. With other members of the empowered Gun Trace Task Force, Jenkins stole from Baltimore’s citizens—skimming from drug busts, pocketing thousands in cash found in private homes, and planting fake evidence to throw Internal Affairs off their scent. Their brazen crime spree would go unchecked for years. The results were countless wrongful convictions, the death of an innocent civilian, and the mysterious death of one cop who was shot in the head, killed just a day before he was scheduled to testify against the unit.
In this urgent book, award-winning investigative journalist Justin Fenton distills hundreds of interviews, thousands of court documents, and countless hours of video footage to present the definitive account of the entire scandal. The result is an astounding, riveting feat of reportage about a rogue police unit, the city they held hostage, and the ongoing struggle between American law enforcement and the communities they are charged to serve.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
February 23, 2021 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9780593394052
- File size: 279209 KB
- Duration: 09:41:41
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Starred review from December 14, 2020
Baltimore Sun reporter Fenton, whose coverage of the Baltimore riots that followed the death of Freddie Gray led to a Pulitzer Prize nomination, debuts with a searing look at that city’s recent police corruption scandal. The Baltimore PD’s Gun Trace Task Force was created in 2007 to make the streets safer by clamping down on guns and drugs; instead, under the crooked leadership of Sgt. Wayne Jenkins, Fenton writes, the task force members became criminals themselves—committing robberies, dealing narcotics, engaging in overtime fraud, and planting or misappropriating evidence. People of color were stopped and harassed on false pretexts by task force members, fostering community distrust of the police at a time when Fenton believed an increase in violent crime meant that ethical policing was more needed than ever. Jenkins and his crew were federally indicted in 2017, and, subsequently, all seven members of the GTTF were convicted of crimes including racketeering, robbery, illegal searches and seizures, and drug dealing. Fenton’s detailed narrative makes the tragic consequences of the GTTF’s graft palpable. Fans of TV series such as Homicide: Life on the Street and The Wire based on journalist David Simon’s groundbreaking coverage of Baltimore will be engrossed. Agent: Rafe Sagalyn, ICM Partners.
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