NOW: It’s been 20 years since The Wire premiered. Courtesy of Bell Mediaĭavid Simon (left) on the set of The Wire season three. Read an edited and condensed version below. Listen to the whole conversation with David Simon on the NOW What podcast available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or the player at the bottom of the page. Is it a coincidence that outlets are reporting heavily on higher crime rates in Toronto and Mayor John Tory responded to violent attacks in New York City by increasing law enforcement on the TTC, while police budgets are criticized? In a conversation with NOW, Simon digs deep into the evolution from The Wire to We Own This City, the freedom to spill off-the-record truths in the fictional series, the crooked reward structure that leads to harmful policing, where he stands on arguments to defund the police and how crime statistics are manipulated to inflate police budgets or for political gain.
“I think nobody in America in authority is yet ready to say that out loud,” says Simon.
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Ultimately, both series make the argument that the war on drugs must end. The series looks at the decisions made by opportunistic politicians who manipulate crime statistics for re-election bids or argue for bigger police budgets, and the trickle-down effect those policies have – like when a beat cop is rewarded for dragging a Black man guilty of sitting on his own stoop in a drug-free zone behind bars. There are stark differences between the two series, not limited to the length and breadth, and the fact that they take place in distinct eras divided by the introduction of smartphone cameras and social media, which meant that what happened between a cop and his detainee didn’t always just leave the former with the last word.īut there are also those aspects in We Own This City that scream Simon and Pelecanos moments that peel away from the crooked GTTF cops brutalizing and robbing criminals and citizens, to absorb the bigger picture. And that’s how the kings of prestige television, who together worked on Treme and The Deuce, brought the cameras back to Baltimore, creating what Pelecanos describes in an email to NOW as a coda to The Wire. Simon even hooked Fenton up with his book agent, helping the younger reporter sell what would become We Own This City: A True Story Of Crime, Cops And Corruption.Ībout a year later, HBO got their hands on the manuscript and approached Simon’s producing partner George Pelecanos about doing a limited series. “I had evaluated what I was reading journalistically and not in terms of television depictions,” says Simon on a Zoom call with NOW.
Simon called journalist Justin Fenton, who worked the same beat he once did at the Baltimore Sun, and encouraged him to write a book about this latest chapter in a futile and destructive drug war, which he once covered in The Wire. But in 2017, those cops were busted for pocketing cash and selling the drugs back to other dealers. Simon was following the real-time news reports in the Baltimore Sun about the Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF), a unit lauded for knocking down doors and seizing drugs, cash and weapons – never mind what harm they caused along the way.
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