We Own This City Trailer Jon Bernthal Plays A Baltimore Cop

Based on true events and adapted from Justin Fenton’s non-fiction book of the same name, “We Own This City” is developed by “The Wire” creator David Simon and George Pelecanos, also a producer and writer on that series. The limited series, directed by “King Richard” filmmaker Reinaldo Marcus Green, premieres April 25 on HBO. The cast includes Jon Bernthal, Jamie Hector, Josh Charles, and Wunmi Mosaku. “We Own This City” chronicles the rise and fall of the Baltimore Police Department’s Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF), where corruption ran rampant amid policies of drug prohibition and celebrated mass arrests in lieu of detective work.

The Baltimore Police Department struggled to respond to crime with meaningful police work in the 2000s, giving itself over to mass arrest and drug warring instead. “We Own This City” shows how the department’s desperate reliance on statistics over substance eventually led to the inability of department officials to supervise the Gun Trace Task Force and the further inability of the department to discipline rogue police. Related Julio Torres Sets New HBO Comedy Series After ‘Los Espookys’ Cancellation Who Should Return to ‘The White Lotus’? Related Quentin Tarantino’s Favorite Movies: 48 Films the Director Wants You to See Oscars 2023: Best International Feature Film PredictionsAt the time of the GTTF scandal in 2017, though there were numerous indications of corruption within several plainclothes units going back almost a decade, Baltimore police commanders believed that any street unit that could consistently bring in guns and drugs had to be championed and protected. “We Own This City” depicts the inevitable corruption of a unit given this carte blanche. Bernthal stars as Sergeant Wayne Jenkins, who was at the center of a federal corruption case focused on the agency’s GTTF, a plainclothes unit that went completely rogue and began hunting and robbing citizens and drug dealers alike as decades of a relentless drug war and mass incarceration in Baltimore spun wildly out of control. Hector co-stars as Sean M. Suiter, a homicide detective caught up in the case. Charles plays Daniel Hersl, another cop working on the GTTF, with Mosaku portraying attorney Nicole Steele, assigned to the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice to investigate police practices in Baltimore prior to the GTTF criminal investigation. “The Wire” alums Hector, Darrell Britt-Gibson, Domenick Lombardozzi, Trey Chaney, Delaney Williams, Jermaine Crawford, Anwan Glover, Chris Clanton, Nathan Corbett, Maria Broom, Susan Rome, and Michael Salconi also co-star. Other lead cast members include McKinley Belcher III, Dagmara Domińczyk, Rob Brown, Don Harvey, David Corenswet, Larry Mitchell, Ian Duff, and Lucas Van Engen. “We Own This City” premieres Monday, April 25, at 9 p.m. on HBO. Check out the trailer below.