I mean, that was the really damning thing about this whole case. In this episode, Julie and Eve talk to Justin about what the Gun Trace Task Force corruption scandal reveals about the war on drugs, police corruption, the relationship between politics and policing, the struggles between law enforcement and the communities they serve, and the suffering of those communities.Įve Yohalem: And how widespread was this kind of corruption? You know, how often did crimes like this happen, not just among the Gun Trace Task Force members, but throughout the department more generally? The story broke in 2017, two years after the murder of Freddie Gray, another tragedy that rocked the city. They abused their power to steal money, to steal drugs that they sometimes resold, to plant evidence, and to lie about their activities, which were in many instances unconstitutional. Instead, the officers mainly patrolled the streets and stopped people, often without sufficient cause. Baltimore had been struggling with high rates of violent crime for decades when, in 2007, the police department established the Gun Trace Task Force, a unit of plain-clothed police officers whose mandate was to go after gun traffickers by conducting sophisticated investigations. We Own This City-written by Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist Justin Fenton and the basis for David Simon’s HBO miniseries-tells the shocking, true story of a massive police corruption scandal.
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