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TIME OFF OPENER
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wo of the most famous names behind
The Wire are back with another story examining
the underbelly of law enforcement in Baltimore.
David Simon and George Pelecanos, who worked
together on the acclaimed 2002–2008 HBO drama, have
teamed up for the new HBO Max miniseries We Own
This City, about a real-life rogue gun-tracing unit in the
Baltimore Police Department.
Adapted from former Baltimore Sun reporter Justin
Fenton’s 2021 book by the same title, the show, arriving
April 25, chronicles one of the most shocking instances
of police corruption in the city’s history. In 2017, eight
members of the Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF), assembled
to remove guns from the streets in an effort to stamp out
violent crime, were charged with robbery, extortion,
racketeering, and overtime fraud. Six of the officers
pleaded guilty, while another two were convicted in 2018.
Sentencing for those involved ranged from seven to 25 years.
Simon himself is a former Sun reporter who covered
the police for more than 10 years before transitioning into
television work. He and Pelecanos, who also writes crime
novels set around Washington, D.C., worked to keep the
story of We Own This City as authentic as possible, using
the names of the real officers involved and filming where
actual events took place. The producers spoke to TIME
about creating the new series, working together, and how
the TV landscape is affected by real-world issues.
TIME: Do you remember when you first heard about
the Gun Trace Task Force investigation? What was
your reaction?
simon: I was reading it in real time in Justin’s coverage.
I actually called Justin and told him this should be a book.
My initial engagement with it was that this deserves more
[attention] than it’s getting. It was just this localized se-
ries of articles in the newspaper. I wasn’t thinking about a
miniseries or television; I was just thinking about what the
story was journalistically.
Pelecanos: As David and I always do when we decide
if we’re going to do something or not, we asked each other:
What’s this about? It had to be about more than about cor-
rupt cops—that television show has been done before.
We saw it as an opportunity to talk about the current state
of policing in America, and how it gets to a point where
this kind of corruption can occur under the watchful eye
of the department.
The end result feels almost like a documentary, rather
than a TV drama. Is that sensibility intentional?
simon: You have to deny yourself the perfect drama some-
times. Sometimes you have to say, Yes, this would be the
grander arc if we could portray it this way, if the guy had
a more poetic line. And sometimes you have to kill those,
because they deny the reality that you are responsible if
you’re dealing with nonfiction material. Sometimes you’ve
got to give in to the writer, and sometimes you dare not—
that’s always an argument that we have in the [writers’]
rooms. It’s what makes it interesting.
Pelecanos: The level of detail is in-
tentional. If we have any fears about
doing these shows, it’s that a person
in Baltimore will look at our Balti-
more show and say, That was bullsh-t.
Same thing when we did The Deuce
in New York. If one person knows we
didn’t get it right, it bothers me.Did the actors bring anything to the
script that you didn’t anticipate?
Pelecanos: Josh Charles is from
Baltimore so he was a perfect choice to
play Daniel Hersl, who I would say is
the most brutal of the GTTF officers.
Josh would ad-lib the Orioles lineup
of 2011—that wasn’t scripted. He
just knew. Jon Bernthal would come
to the set with his own information
[about the case]. Everyone was really
committed to this. All the actors asked
a lot of questions. They were serious
about it.As longtime collaborators,
how would you describe your
working dynamic?
Pelecanos: David and I don’t really△
We Own This
City filmed
where actual
events occurred