We Own This City True Story: What Happened & What It Got Right
HBO miniseries We Own This City is based on the true story of the Baltimore Gun Trace Task Force and the investigation into the group's corruption.
The HBO miniseries We Own This City is based on the investigation into and reform of the Baltimore Gun Trace Task Force, a group within the Baltimore Police Department who were arrested in one of the city's most prominent police corruption scandals. Much of the series is drawn directly from reporting and the legal indictments against the task force. There are some changes to create a more compelling narrative, but for the most part We Own This City is very faithful to the scandalous true story it is based on.
We Own This City sees The Wire writers David Simon and George Pelecanos returning to the setting of Baltimore and its ongoing issues with crime and policing. As with other Simon miniseries like Show Me A Hero and Generation Kill, the series is heavily based on journalism, in this case the 2021 nonfiction book We Own This City by former Baltimore Sun reporter Justin Fenton. The story is set amidst public unrest and distrust in policing following the 2015 death of Freddie Gray, which saw six police officers charged with homicide. The negligence that led to Gray's death, and the subsequent acquittal or dismissal of charges for all of the officers, led to widespread protests and was seen by many as another example of police targeting and killing Black people with no repercussions.
John Bernthal stars as the real-life Sgt. Wayne Jenkins, the leader of the Gun Trace Task Force. The Gun Trace Task Force effectively operated as its own gang within the city of Baltimore, conducting a number of robberies and keeping the money for themselves. While the Task Force largely targeted drug dealers, unlike The Wire's memorable Omar, they also harassed a number of people who were never charged with a crime, including stealing $20,000 from a couple arrested outside a Home Depot with no evidence of a crime. The group is believed to have stolen at least $300,000 in cash as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of marijuana, heroin, cocaine, and jewelry. In addition to robbery, the GTTF was charged with extortion, racketeering, and overtime fraud, with almost all members sentenced to significant jail time. Most of the events in the series are true to life, with some small alterations. Here's what We Own This City changes from the true story it is based on and what it gets right.
We Own This City episode 1, "Part One," details the unlikely beginnings of the investigations that would bring down the Gun Trace Task Force. Harford County narcotics cop David McDougall, played by We Own This City cast member David Corensweet, is a real-life police officer who stumbled upon the case. 2018 reporting broadly recounts (via The Baltimore Sun) the same inciting incident as the series, with McDougall finding a young woman dead of a heroin overdose and asking the man with her, Kenneth Diggins, about where he got the drugs. In real life, however, McDougall obtained the information over an eight-hour interview instead of a brief conversation. Diggins was charged with distributing heroin and sentenced to a decade in prison.
As in We Own This City, Diggins' information led McDougall and Baltimore County Detective Scott Kilpatrick to street dealer Aaron Anderson, who went by the street name "Black." As in the series, robbers hit Anderson's apartment before McDougall could get there, stealing $100,000 worth of heroin. When McDougall and Kilpatrick caught up to Anderson, they found a tracker on his car belonging to Gun Trace Task Force member John Clewell. Like The Wire, We Own This City is rooted heavily in the geography and culture of Baltimore, with even the hotel Anderson was arrested at, the Red Roof Inn, being accurate to the true story. Ironically, Clewell was the one member of the Task Force that was never charged with a crime, as prosecutors concluded that he had unwittingly loaned his GTTF colleague Detective Momodu Gondo the GPS tracker.
We Own This City also broadly reflects the corrupt culture of impunity throughout the BPD. We Own This City episode 1 shows the Civil Rights Office investigating Daniel Hersl (played by Josh Charles), based on a real-life member of the Gun Trace Task Force who faced frequent allegations of harassment and police brutality but was protected by the department. Not only were the Task Force's crimes overlooked, the Gun Trace Task Force was celebrated as a model unit within the BPD, just as copaganda TV shows prior to Black Lives Matter often glorified bending the rules to get "results." Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, portrayed in We Own This City by Paige Carter, even had a press conference in 2016 celebrating a large bust by Sgt. Jenkins' unit. While the GTTF seemed to be effective, they also relied upon manufacturing evidence and coercing testimony. Once the Task Force's crimes were revealed, hundreds of cases had to be revisited, with many thrown out.
The 2017 arrest of Wayne Jenkins and other members of the GTTF is also largely faithful to the true story. The DEA and FBI first began investigating Gondo and later widened their net to include the rest of the Task Force. The series is also accurate in depicting that Jenkins was brought in under a false pretense, although in real life he believed he was receiving a promotion instead of being questioned about damage to a vehicle.
The first episode of the six-episode We Own This City miniseries largely sticks to reality, but it does somewhat fictionalize the prosecution side of things. While the U.S. Department of Justice did conduct a civil rights investigation into the BPD in the wake of the Freddie Gray killing, Wunmi Mosaku's character Nicole Steele is fictitious, possibly a composite of several real-life investigators. However, other characters involved in the investigation, such as Erika Jensen and John Sieracki of the FBI and homicide detective Sean Suiter, were based on real people of the same name. Overall, almost all the events in We Own This City episode 1 were heavily based on reality.
New episodes of We Own This City are released Mondays on HBO Max.