FLORIDO: D. Watkins - that's one of the journalists who covers this case as it's playing out and who you feature in the film. WJZ has covered the real-life Gun Trace Task Force investiga. Sharp Dressed Man is the only program of its kind in the greater Baltimore area. SOHN: First and foremost, it speaks to the lack of trust that the people of the city have in law enforcement not only in Baltimore, but across the country. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Oh, my god. Former members of the GTTF. Im still worth something., The Slow Hustle is now available on HBO with a UK date to be announced. Detectives Daniel Hersl and Marcus Taylor. That produces a culture taken to its extreme, which it was in Baltimore by many, that the ends justify the means, Bromwich continues. "The Slow Hustle" is the title of a new HBO documentary out now. Washingtonian spoke with Sohn last week about her new joint. French, French Speaking Africa It opens as Jenkins gives a speech to his unit in which he seems to say the right things that beating on people gets in the way of doing the job and that, in the task force, were not about that kind of brutality. Reinaldo Marcus Green directs and serves as executive producer. See the full cast here. Tells the story of the rise and fall of the Baltimore Police Department's Gun Trace Task Force and the corruption surrounding it. With no reliable eyewitnesses to the crime, a harried if largely clueless search ensued, most of it predicated on a generic description of a Black man in a dark jacket with a white stripe. Spanish, Colombia English, Denmark The crime drama series is based on Justin Fenton's 2021 nonfiction book of the same name and stars . The police department is now under federal oversight but the decades-old spectre of corruption lingers. Through his early years on the force, Jenkins goes from learning how to scam the overtime rules to outright larceny. And that case right there has a connection to many other cases that were in the public eye at the time. Youre asking me about the word hope at a very particular time in my life, where Im engaging in a deeper sort of debate around the purpose of the word itself. I feel like the city is a reflection of my own psyche. That is D.s perspective within the film. With police reform stalled in Congress, and Republicans stoking fear of rising crime in major cities, does she believe the momentum of the Black Lives Matter protests can be sustained? This emphasis on numbers and quantity over quality really had a corrosive effect on the police department and influenced the conduct of officers. Was his death a calculated effort to keep him silent, or was Suiter himself a cop under scrutiny with a past he couldnt face? Thats a terrible fucking idea. English, Hong Kong Kostoplis replied: No. Created by David Simon, this seminal series explores the world of crime in Baltimore through the lenses of both civilians and law enforcement. (SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "THE SLOW HUSTLE"). This beautiful family who is patient and has faith in them, they really dont care. FLORIDO: That was Sonja Sohn. Suspicions were aroused that a hit had been ordered to silence him. Includes: Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo - Brazzaville, Congo - Kinshasa, Cte d'Ivoire, Djibouti . A far-reaching corruption scandal is the last thing Baltimore's troubled police department needs. The two men were sent to prison for crimes they did not commit. The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. Here we have a case in which a cop has fallen and ultimately one of the major obstacles to solving this death, this mystery, this crime is the fact that the police cant be trusted. English, Indonesia Suiter, it turned out, wasnt just some nondescript detective; he was scheduled to testify before a federal grand jury about his fellow officers corruption the following day. We'll help you live your best #DCLIFE every day, A Bigger Field Awaits Us: The Scottish Soccer Team That Fought the Great War. In July of 2022, the lead investigator into Sean Suiter's death, Sgt James Lloyd was sentenced to one year in jail for using his fellow policemen to harass a contractor working on his home. David Simon returns to a familiar beat for HBO, updating if not improving on an old critique. I think Baltimore does what it did to me and its a divine mirror. But this type of casual everyday lying, stealing, misrepresenting information, in some cases framing people its hard to prove and for that reason it often went unaddressed., The misconduct continued despite the outcry over Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old African American man who died of neck injuries suffered in police custody in April 2015. Executive producers George Pelecanos, David Simon, cast, and crew go behind the scenes. Portuguese, Brazil, Chile When institutions cant solve their own problems, the people suffer. None, it seems, let Baltimore get under their skin as much as Sonja Sohn, who played police detective Kima Greggs the first major portrayal of a Black lesbian on American television on the trail of drug lords in the five-season drama. Nobody knew. THE SLOW HUSTLE, a feature documentary directed by Sonja Sohn (HBO's "Baltimore Rising", "The Wire"), chronicles the still unsolved death of Baltimore police detective Sean Suiter, fatally shot in the head in 2017 while in the line of duty, and explores the ongoing speculation about what really happened that day. Filmmaker and actress Sonja Sohn of "The Wire" returns with the follow-up to her 2017 documentary"Baltimore Rising." The new film, titled "The Slow Hustle," looks to be an equally powerful look. English, Romania For years its plainclothes officers went on a a crime spree that included robbing people they stopped on the streets, planting drugs and guns on innocent people, invading peoples homes and stealing from them as well as fraudulently charging the city for working overtime. Theres a whole philosophical debate around human beings, and, you know, are they inherently good or evil? And so it's clear to me this is another way to look at the question of how we're going to restructure a - how we're going to create another structure for protection and safety because right now, I'm not convinced that "defunding the police," quote, unquote, is really the thing because that's supporting social structures that support the people. Spanish, Mexico (The 2021 HBO documentary The Slow Hustle, by the Wire alum Sonja Sohn, touched on aspects of the case.) 2023 Home Box Office, Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Baltimore police department, recognising that the problem was perhaps guns more than drugs, wanted to have a smarter approach. It also tracks several local journalists, including Baltimore Sunreporter Justin Fenton andSalon editor-at-large D. Watkins, while they parse the investigation into Suiters death to its official andto many, including Suiters familyunsatisfying conclusion. Baltimore's history of police corruption The scandal broke at a time of struggle and high tensions between Baltimore community members and the police department. You were filming as this was all playing out in real time. And I have about as much hope that his death will be solved as I do the rest of them. A still from "Adrienne.". It wasnt that we heard about them all the time. The Baltimore Animal Rescue and Care Shelter (BARCS) is the largest companion animal shelter in Maryland. Naturally, Suiters wife Nicole didnt take kindly to the notion that her husband had offed himself in a supposed plan to avoid testifying, and the medical examiner failed to shed conclusive light on the situation. The Wires Sonja Sohn on her Baltimore documentary: We are seeing multilayered corruption, Director Sonja Sohn interviewing D Watkins for The Slow Hustle. The series was shot in Baltimore and brings together several alumni of the The Wire, both on screen and behind the camera, including David Simon and George Pelecanos. Sonja, thank you for joining us. German Reports showed that Suiter had been presentand involved in some waywith a 2010 incident in which GTTF members, using unmarked cars, attempted to rob two Black men who subsequently fled the scene, resulting in a car chase and auto accident that killed an innocent motorist. I can make a movie. A protest of Sean Suiters death in The Slow Hustle. In HBOs We Own This City, Jon Bernthal plays Sgt. English, Vietnam Director Reinaldo Marcus Green and writer D. Watkins, along with George Pelecanos and David Simon, discuss the importance of accuracy and authenticity when creating this series based on true events. A detective in a nearby county traces a string of overdoses to Baltimore. But it brought back the visceral sensation of being in Baltimore for the uprising that followed the death of Gray. Ex-po. English, Belgium In practice, theyre all about that brutality and then some. Over the years, as I describe in the book, it lost that focus and was just another unit of plainclothes officers running around the city. Fenton writes that the police commissioner Frederick Bealefield insisted that police were not going after everyone in Baltimore any more, just bad guys with guns. Simons longtime critiques in many ways anticipated the protests over policing of the past several years. At the center of The Slow Hustle is Baltimore Police Department detective Sean Suiter. Baltimore prosecutors want greater flexibility to undo convictions after Gun Trace Task Force scandal. We Own This City Review: Baltimore Police Problems, Rewired, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/24/arts/television/we-own-this-city-review.html. Many residents in the city, especially in Black communities, just don't trust the police. info_outline, Includes: Ascension Island, Botswana, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Malawi, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, St. Helena, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, South Africa, South Sudan, Sudan, Eswatini, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Finland He enjoyed the admiration and respect of his superiors and was given special privileges. Sonja Sohn, who played Baltimore cop Kima Greggs onThe Wire and who founded a Baltimore-based nonprofit, directs the film. English, India The cops once reportedly found a gun and a pound and a half of marijuana in an illegal warrantless search. English, Bulgaria English, Poland The Slow Hustle exists at the intersection of true crime and social justice documentaries, concerned as it is with a fatal mystery wrapped up in an epidemic of police corruption. What it does offer, however, is a forlorn perspective on a major metropolis whose police force has so betrayed the publics trust that the truth is now impossible to determineand, consequently, cynicism reigns supreme regarding the powers-that-be. The unsolved case also sparked far-reaching implications for a city already grappling with the complexities of policing in contemporary, urban America. He was praised as a positive role model. In a war, you count the bodies and then you call them victories., Its a strong editorial, but that does not make for a great show. Rather than just railing against the GTTF, Watkins spends time discussing the numerous similarities he shares with one of the convicted officers in order to highlight how Baltimores problems are less about individuals than about the environment in which theyre raised and operate. The cast and crew explore Baltimore as a character, touching on the real people and locations portrayed in the series. By Samuel Sasu April 26, 2022. United States The Slow Hustle contains interviews with Suiters widow and children, lawyers, politicians and investigative journalists, and Baltimore police including former commissioner Kevin Davis. The film is about one of the nation's biggest police corruption scandals. Six of the eight arrested pleaded guilty to the charges. 5 Takeaways From ESPNs (Newest) Bombshell Dan Snyder Report, The Bidens Went to Dinner and Ordered the Same Dish, Dividing the Internet, PHOTOS: 2023 Library of Congress Gershwin Prize Honoree Dinner Celebrating Joni Mitchell, Cherry Blossom Peak Bloom Is Predicted for March 22-25. On Wednesday morning, former Baltimore police Sgt. I was sitting up at CBGBs [music club], the only Black girl with shaved hair, screaming, and I had a zine. 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