There are two important things to know about watching the new HBO limited series We Own This City.
First, Jon Bernthal is fascinating as the duplicitous Sgt. Wayne Jenkins. Secondly, the scenes where Jenkins isn’t the main focus are slow and boring. That’s to be expected in the opening episode, which premiered Monday on HBO, as the table needs to be set. Thankfully, as the characters are established and the largely true story unfolds, the real Jenkins is revealed, and that’s how he ended up getting arrested.
In a post-Freddie Gray Baltimore, Bernthals Jenkins was shown delivering a rousing speech on why brutality is the opposite of sound policemanship. The head of the Gun Trace Task Force passionately argued that to get information out of suspects you had to talk to them rather than hit them on the head. Jenkins even joked that he understood the motivation for beating up cocky offenders, but then explained that an officer’s inability to contain his anger would only bring him to court.
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A few scenes later, Jenkins was shown talking quietly to a house full of illegal gun owners as he and his officers arrested them, confiscated their firearms, and stole their money. Although the actual theft wasn’t filmed, it’s not hard to figure out that Jenkins was dirty and so were his squad. A younger Jenkins was shown breaking a liquor bottle in a man’s hand because public drinking is illegal. Still, there was a better way, and Jenkins could have just written a ticket if he hadn’t opted for brutality.
As the limited series opener proved, the top cop’s sticky fingers were worse than his closed fists. What he didn’t grab himself, his boys did for him. Because of this, the FBI was shown interrogating one of its most prolific subordinates, Detective Momodu “G-Money” Gondo (played by McKinley Belcher III). In one instance, Gondo used a police tracker to find out when a drug dealer would not be home so he and his crew could blind rob the drug dealer.
Meanwhile, Detective Daniel Hersl (an all-too-convincing Josh Charles) beat and molested innocent citizens at will and apparently couldn’t be fired no matter how many complaints were filed. Nicole Steele (Wunmi Mosaku of Lovecraft Country) is the Justice Department attorney working to bring down Hersl within the Gun Trace Task Force, and Detective David McDougall (David Corenswet) is the county cop who begins investigating the dots of Jenkins’ dirty dealings. In case you’re wondering, McDougall is based on a real-life detective of the same name, but Steele is a character amalgamation.
Adapting the non-fiction book of the same name by former Baltimore Sun reporter Justin Fenton, We Own This City is not only packed with characters, but also in its timeline. A moment takes place in 2015, and then the narrative jumps ahead two years. Despite all of that, The Wire’s David Simon and George Pelecanos have created a miniseries that’s as intriguing as it is daunting.
There are even moments of triumph, though for no other reason than that we saw Jenkins get arrested at the end of the first part. But as then-Baltimore Police Commissioner Kevin Davis (the ever-welcome Delaney Williams) pointed out, it wasn’t Jenkins’ arrest that got him arrested, it was the cocky manner he reacted afterwards that confirmed his guilt.
What do you think of We Own This City so far? will you keep watching Rate the premiere in our poll and leave your thoughts in the comments.