As the upcoming HBO series We Own This City nears its premiere date, it’s time to take another look at the story with a new trailer that showcases tensions so high they'll make viewers jump to the edge of their seats. The six episodes will chronicle the Gun Trace Task Force scandal that shocked Baltimore and the rest of the country in 2017, developed by George Pelecanos and David Simon, the same duo that brought together the widely acclaimed crime series The Wire.
The new trailer illustrates how complex and dangerous the scenario became in Baltimore as police officers started to act out once it became clear that they accepted brutality as part of their job description. It also showcases how an investigation can quickly change the course of the conversation on drug policy, as it ends up leading to discoveries involving corruption, prejudice, and a dire need to better educate police officers.
This isn’t exclusive to Baltimore, though, as scenes shown in the We Own This City trailer can be commonly seen in other parts of the country, and even outside the United States. The trailer suggests that the series will shed light on how abusive cop behavior is an insidious practice that helps perpetuate a violent cycle and mask deeper society issues wherever it happens.
The limited series is based on the book We Own This City: A True Story of Crime, Cops, and Corruption by Baltimore Sun reporter Justin Fenton. The book chronicles the rise and fall of the Baltimore Police Department's Gun Trace Task Force and the corruption and moral collapse that can befall a city in which the policies of drug prohibition and mass arrest are championed at the expense of actual police work.
We Own This City is directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green and stars Jon Bernthal, Wunmi Mosaku, Jamie Hector, and Josh Charles, as well as The Wire alumni Jamie 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.
HBO premieres We Own This City on April 25, at 9:00 ET/PT, with a streaming premiere on HBO Max the same day. Check out the new trailer below:
Check out the show's official synopsis here:
In the 2000s, the Baltimore Police Department struggled to respond to crime with meaningful police work, 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. At 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 held to the belief that any street unit that could bring in guns and drugs consistently had to be championed and protected. WE OWN THIS CITY depicts the inevitable corruption of a unit given this carte blanche.