"We Own This City", a "The Wire" with accents of "The Shield"

• Twenty years after the launch of

  The Wire

  , David Simon once again sets up his camera in Baltimore.

• We Own This City

  , a miniseries broadcast this Tuesday at 8:40 p.m. on OCS City, tells the scandal of the Gun Trace Task Force, an elite unit plagued by corruption and violence.

• A kind of epilogue in 6 episodes of

  The Wire

  , crossed with

  The Shield.

Welcome to Baltimore, where, alas, nothing has changed!

From 2002 to 2009 on HBO, David Simon described in

the cogs of the social, political and economic functioning of the metropolis of Baltimore and painted the portrait of a port city plagued by drug trafficking and completely corrupt.

Twenty years after the launch of this sacred fiction "best series of all time", David Simon brilliantly returns with producer George Pelecanos to the city where he was a journalist for the

for twenty years.

, a 6-episode miniseries broadcast in US + 24 from this Tuesday at 8:40 p.m. on OCS City, is an adaptation of the eponymous book by Justin Fenton, from, like the showrunner, the

David Simon returns this time to the scandal, revealed in 2017, of the Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF), an elite unit of the Baltimore police, of which eight of the nine members have been accused of corruption, abuse of power, organized racketeering and repeated violations of the constitutional rights of the people of Baltimore.

A sort of epilogue, as bitter as it is successful, to his cult work.

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We Own This City

recounts the rise and fall of this band of crooks, led by Sergeant Wayne Jenkins (Jon Bernthal,

), and including Daniel Hersl (Josh Charles,

), Jemell Rayam ( Darrell Britt Gibson,

), Momodu Gondo (McKinley Belcher III,

) and Maurice Ward (Rob Brown,

), who vent their rage in flashbacks generated by their interrogations.

The miniseries also shows them who put an end to their actions, the FBI team led by Erika Jensen (Dagmara Domińczyk,

) and John Sieracki (Don Harvey,

), as well as a group of civil rights lawyers, led by Nicole Steele, fictional character played by Wunmi Mosaku, seen in

and

.

“Nicole Steele is a mixture of many people.

She represents the audience on the show.

She asks the questions that viewers ask themselves: how did it happen?

Why did this happen?

How was this allowed to happen?

How can we prevent this from happening again?

It turns out that she is part of the DOJ [Department of Justice of the United States] and that she tries to instil transparency and integrity, ”says the actress, whom

met at Series Mania.

The “murder of Freddie Gray” as a starting point

The series begins in 2015 with the arrest by Baltimore police of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old African-American, who died of a fractured cervical vertebra after his violent arrest, filmed by passers-by.

“

seems so relevant, and even though the facts are from 2017, this story is necessary,” says Wunmi Mosaku.

Images reminiscent of those of the murder of George Floyd.

“The murder of George Floyd, filmed and broadcast around the world during a pandemic, had a huge impact on how we talk about racism, white supremacy and inequality.

But I don't know if the actions to neutralize these oppressors are in place.

But I feel like the conversations are more honest.

Personally, I never said “white supremacy” in front of a white person before 2020. But now we've all seen it.

We had seen it before, but we were distracted, there, we were sitting at home.

But we are far from having neutralized and destroyed white supremacy, racism and inequality.

We're not there yet,” says Wunmi Mosaku.

The impunity of the Gun Trace Task Force

The case triggers riots, causes an increase in crime.

On the side of the police, the logic of "them against us" imposes itself to the detriment of the real work of the police, while the hierarchy turns a blind eye to the embezzlement of the GTTF, a unit created in 2007 to contain the explosion of the crime in the city, given their impressive statistics.

Racketeering, fabrication of evidence, blunders, fraudulent overtime… The methods of the GTTF have nothing to envy to those of the crooked (and fictitious) cops of

.

"I had heard of the murder of Freddie Gray, but as I was then living in Britain, I knew nothing of the consequences for the police, nor of the politics that ensued, what was happening in Baltimore between the city ​​hall, the police, the DOJ… It concerned a lot of people.

Even in the White House, it was important, everything was in a kind of fragile balance, especially just after the election of Donald Trump.

This series is terribly important,” comments Wunmi Mosaku.

The GTTF affair highlights the spiral of police brutality and the dysfunctions of the politics of figures, as well as the harsh observation of institutions to stem drug trafficking and violence in the United States.

And through Nicole Steele's journey, we realize the difficulty of defending civil rights: "During Trump's presidency, the civil rights division was null and void and the office practically closed...", laments Wunmi Mosaku.

Repetition and frustration are ingrained in

Through six episodes conducted at full speed and with the documentary style that is the singular strength of his work, David Simon delivers a raw choral narrative that measures the political and social cost of the war on drugs waged in

.

“This war on drugs is lost.

But who will tell?

“says one of the characters disillusioned.

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