Is ‘We Own This City’ Based on a True Story?

HBO’s We Own This City is yet another series from the brilliant mind of David Simon, who brought us shows like The Wire, Homicide: Life on the Street, and Treme. Simon and his frequent collaborator George Pelecanos co-created We Own This City, a six-episode series that stars Jon Bernthal as one of several corrupt cops working within the Baltimore Police Department.

Is We Own This City based on a true story?

We Own This City is based on the book by Justin Fenton, a reporter for the Baltimore Sun. As a journalist at the Sun, Fenton extensively covered the 2017 FBI investigation of the members of the Baltimore police department’s Gun Trace Task Force, which led to the eventual arrest of eight of the officers who were involved for their roles in a criminal scheme involving robbery and extortion that targeted drug dealers and innocent civilians. Eventually, all of the officers charged were found guilty of various crimes that included racketeering, robbery, extortion, and overtime fraud.

Jon Bernthal and Josh Charles star in the series as Sgt. Wayne Jenkins and Daniel Hersl, two of the Baltimore Police officers who were part of the corrupt task force. While almost all of the other actors in the series are playing roles based on real-life people involved in the investigation, there is one person in the show that is purely fictional. The character of Nicole Steele, played by Wunmi Mosaku, the attorney working for the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice investigating the questionable policing practices, is not a real person, Mosaku has explained that she is an amalgam of the DOJ lawyers who worked on the case.

We Own This City airs Monday nights at 9PM on HBO.