That track record gave the Gun Trace Task Force outsize influence and latitude within the department, especially at a time when an informal but widespread police work stoppage led to plummeting arrest numbers and increased crime. The hand-picked nine-officer squad became legendary for its efficacy in pulling illegal guns off the street and sniffing out ill-gotten cash like Kevlar-vested truffle pigs. It’s difficult to overstate just how qualified Simon, based on his past work, is to adapt the rise and fall of the Gun Trace Task Force, an elite plainclothes unit within the Baltimore Police Department that imploded under federal civil rights scrutiny following the death of Freddie Gray while in the BPD’s custody. Or, as “ We Own This City,” HBO’s latest collaboration with co-creators David Simon and George Pelecanos, suggests, such a drama about real American policing is possible with a fortuitous combination of the right material and a writer perfectly equipped to breathe life into it. Perhaps current events involving, for example, police-involved shootings are too sad, too fresh, too morally muddled, or too lacking in resolution to be molded into an eight-episode drama with a royal-flush ensemble. “When They See Us” was, nevertheless, a period piece that echoed contemporary cases, but lacked the punch of a story ripped from recent headlines. That show drew its power from how relevant the issues it explored remain three decades since the real-life incident that inspired it. The recent exception is “When They See Us,” Ava DuVernay’s gut-wrenching retelling of the Central Park Five case, which remains a potent example of how myopic and flawed police investigations can ruin lives.
(The quality of such well-intentioned episodes generally ranges between “Not totally humiliating” and “May induce cringe spasms.”) The problem of dysfunctional policing and its disproportionate impact on communities of color has been largely ignored by scripted television, save for occasional arcs on the fictional police dramas whose rose-tinted views of police work have contributed to that very issue. And yet for as many as there are, notably few have drawn from what is arguably America’s most consequential (and most intractable) criminal justice phenomenon.
Scripted limited-run dramas inspired by recent, buzzy true-crime tales have recently oversaturated the market.
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