NPR's Adrian Florido speaks with director and actor Sonja Sohn about her new film, The Slow Hustle. At the center of it all lies a fallen officer and the complexities of life in one of the most investigated police departments in the country, where impropriety appears to penetrate a broken system at every level. The actor-turned-directors new film The Slow Hustle tells the story of a detective who was killed just before he was set to testify in a corruption case. But day after day, the revelations keep coming. And we're all not feeling protected nor served. The true story of the Baltimore Gun Trace Task Force. But except for flashbacks, the story is set in the latter 2010s. You were filming as this was all playing out in real time. Now she returns there with The Slow Hustle, an HBO documentary that examines the 2017 death of Sean Suiter, a widely respected Black police detective fatally shot in the head while on duty. Sohn cofounded ReWired for Change, a local outreach programme for at-risk youth, and made her directorial debut in 2017 with Baltimore Rising, which depicted the Black-majority city in the aftermath of the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray in police custody. 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. But these challenges continue and I wonder how we will know if the department has fixed itself. How do we measure that, how do we quantify that, especially given the deep-seated bad feelings about this department?. Sonja Sohn directed "The Slow Hustle." Their solution: They sold the drugs and firearm back onto the street. The HBO drama is based on Justin Fentons nonfiction book of the same name. Start from the beginning and watch the first episode ofWe Own This Cityfor free. THE SLOW HUSTLE debuts TUESDAY, DECEMBER 7 (8:00-9:30 p.m. ET/PT). Along the way, though, you got a lot of rich personal stories to invest in, which is how dramas with a broad social scope manage to succeed as both art and argument. While an Independent Review Board was ultimately created to get to the bottom of this, its conclusionthat Suiter had taken his own lifedidnt convince skeptics, especially considering that its final report featured at least one glaring factual error that undercut its reliability. The phones are smarter; the law enforcement machinery is not. 890K views 5 years ago BALTIMORE Two Baltimore police officers are on trial this week in federal court for some of this worst misconduct imaginable. 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. Fenton commented: Every officials talking about reform, reform, reform and you think that all eyes are on the police department and everybodys behaving their best and yet this is going on. Kostoplis was transferred out of the GTTF soon after. Theyre up in that supreme court and they are winning. So the federal investigation that eventually brought Jenkins and some of his cronies to justice is no spoiler. Last. He enjoyed the admiration and respect of his superiors and was given special privileges. info_outline, Hungary Supervisors had no incentive to report misconduct by their underlings because, given the culture of the police department, that would put them in a bad odour in the rest of the department.. He was law enforcement. He and members of the GTTF framed the two men that Jenkins had been pursuing by planting drug evidence. You know, it took a minute to gain their trust. But they also have a brash, cocky face: Sgt. Stream on HBO Max on Dec. 1. He was praised as a positive role model. Nobody knew. Baltimore Police. The results of this quest were predictably meager, and it wasnt long before pressure began to mount on Commissioner Kevin Davisfrom both the public and the mayorto find the assailant who killed this heroic cop in the line of duty. 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. It hasnt escaped David Simon and George Pelecanos, the creator and a producer of The Wire, who have returned to their geographic and rhetorical turf with We Own This City, beginning on HBO Monday. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. English, United States We dont always like what we see but we need to see whats in that mirror if were going to actually present truthfully in the world.. The corruption has cost Baltimore taxpayers more than $13 million in settlements with victims and hundreds of cases the corrupt officers worked on had to be thrown out. Accuracy and availability may vary. FLORIDO: That was Sonja Sohn. Jensen monitors Gondos calls. Let us stipulate that it is unfair to compare any series to The Wire, even if it is about policing, even if it is set in Baltimore, even if it happens to be made by two of the figures behind that HBO all-time great, which marks its two-decade anniversary this year. Ultimately, the journey reveals how theculture of corruption within the ranks of the Baltimore police forcecontributed to the destruction of the publics trust and impacted the police departments ability to solve a shooting deathof one of its own. English, Hong Kong Sohn was born to an African American father and Korean mother who met after the Korean war. Former members of the GTTF. The documentary We Own This City draws attention to the corruption within the Baltimore Police Department. English, Thailand Spanish, Colombia Bringing Jenkins and his ilk to justice does not mean Baltimores problems are resolved. We are seeing multilayered corruption with new eyes as a culture. February 12, 20188:02 PM ET. Bernthal (recently of the Sopranos prequel, The Many Saints of Newark) makes a convincing baby gangster, arrogant and petulant, growing sloppier and greedier. What you might miss is the vivid human tapestry that brings this kind of institutional analysis to life on the screen and keeps it alive in your memory. Michael A. They were veritable gangsters, and the fact that Suiter died in this puzzling manner a mere day before he was speaking to the feds about his shady colleagues raised immediate suspicions that he was actually the victim of an orchestrated hit. Sohn is also sceptical. As new evidence emerges, the mystery deepens. THE SLOW HUSTLE follows Detective Suitors widow and local investigative reporters as they work to get answers in the Suiter case and hold the Baltimore Police Department and City Hall accountable. Fenton has spoken to many people in Jenkins orbit and made multiple attempts to contact Jenkins in prison but without success. The cast includes Jon Bernthal (The Walking Dead,Show Me a Hero),Josh Charles (The Good Wife,In Treatment), Wunmi Mosaku (Lovecraft Country), and Jamie Hector (BOSCH,The Wire), among many others. Seven Baltimore Police officers indicted on federal racketeering charges Two former Baltimore Police officers sentenced to a combined 454 years in federal prison for shaking down citizens in the early 2000s had their prison terms reduced to 20 years each by a. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Oh, my god. THE SLOW HUSTLE includes insightful commentary from journalists who remain determined to speak truth to power, including Justin Fenton, author of We Own This City: A True Story of Crime, Cops and Corruption and D. Watkins, author of We Speak for Ourselves: How Woke Culture Prohibits Progress who believes the shooting death of Suiter could have been an inside job. Michael Bromwich, a former US justice department inspector general, and his team conducted a two-year investigation that included more than 160 interviews and examined hundreds of thousands of pages of documents. English, Korea I was railing when there was nobody railing with me. Long history of neglect: why are missing Black people still less likely to be found? That revelation leads to speculation that maybe Suiter's killing was an inside job meant to keep him quiet, or that maybe he took his own life. The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. HBOs We Own This City Production team is proud to be working with many local Baltimore non-profits to create positive change in the communities where we filmed. Looking for more? The unsolved case also sparked far-reaching implications for a city already grappling with the complexities of policing in contemporary, urban America. The Bachelor Has Two Maryland Contestants. Debuting on Dec. 7 on HBO, The Wire actress Sonja Sohns sophomore directorial effort is, like 2017s Baltimore Rising, a story about racial unrest and institutional misconduct in Baltimore, all of it once again revolving around dirty cops and a dead Black man. Podcast episodes are available each week right after the latest episode. The Slow Hustle contains interviews with Suiters widow and children, lawyers, politicians and investigative journalists, and Baltimore police including former commissioner Kevin Davis. I Got A Monster (2023) Documentary Official Trailer In March of 2017, America's deadliest city was rocked by one of the nation's biggest Police corruption scandals. Executive produced byGeorge Pelecanos (The Deuce) and David Simon (The Wire) -- and based on the book by Baltimore Sun reporter Justin Fenton --We Own This Cityis a six-hour, limited series chronicling the rise and fall of the Baltimore Police Department's Gun Trace Task Force. It wasnt that we heard about them all the time. In March 2017, eight members of the GTTF were indicted and arrested on federal charges of robbery, extortion, overtime fraud and selling drugs seized during police operations. e was praised as a positive role model. It spans dozens if not hundreds of incidents under our noses and theres reasons for that which I try to explain in the book. Baltimore prosecutors want greater flexibility to undo convictions after Gun Trace Task Force scandal. It is not a good look.. Maybe this is intentional. Over six episodes, host D. Watkins will share his experiences in and out of the writers room and speak to the people who brought this story to the screen. Many residents in the city, especially in Black communities, just don't trust the police. See production, box office & company info, Undercurrent: The Disappearance of Kim Wall, Bad tidings in the Baltimore Police Department. This beautiful family who is patient and has faith in them, they really dont care. English, Malaysia I did not want to initially direct another film that involves law enforcement. 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 The Wires Sonja Sohn on her Baltimore documentary: We are seeing multilayered corruption, Director Sonja Sohn interviewing D Watkins for The Slow Hustle. But unlike that venerated saga, We Own This City is based on the true story told in the journalist Justin Fentons nonfiction book of the same name. Its remarkable.. They were working in the shadows, and deployed by the police department as another tool to roam the streets looking for guns.. 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. Theres a whole philosophical debate around human beings, and, you know, are they inherently good or evil? Andrew Beaujon joined Washingtonian in late 2014. We Own This City Review: Baltimore Police Problems, Rewired, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/24/arts/television/we-own-this-city-review.html. But the GTTFs reign of impunity was cut short when a suburban drug investigation happened to reveal one officers contacts with a drug organisation. Led by interviews with Salons D. Watkins (a Baltimore native), The Baltimore Suns Justin Fenton and WMAR-TVs Brian Kuebler, Sohns film immerses itself in a city plagued by pervasive distrust of the police, thanks to a long history of corruption, harassment and murderthe most recent and notorious example of which was the 2015 killing of Freddie Gray. Whats the mission?, Exactly. Created by David Simon, this seminal series explores the world of crime in Baltimore through the lenses of both civilians and law enforcement. Focusing on the 1980s, the documentary tells the story of Michael Dowd, a former. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. (The 2021 HBO documentary The Slow Hustle, by the Wire alum Sonja Sohn, touched on aspects of the case.) They drove a short distance to a side street where Jenkins told Kostoplis to leave his phone and equipment in the van and get out. So to me, that was a microcosm of the macrocosm. 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. Ultimately his death is one of hundreds of unsolved deaths in the city. Officers tell me that its a new day over there and everybodys wearing body cameras all the time, which wasnt the case until pretty late in the investigation of the gun trace taskforce. She was, perhaps, a counterculture rebel and social justice activist before her time. Im still worth something., The Slow Hustle is now available on HBO with a UK date to be announced. / D Watkins, a local journalist and author who shares the view that Suiters death could have been an inside job, says in the film: What developed for me out of the whole story is this whole idea of Black lives really dont matter. By what name was The Slow Hustle (2021) officially released in Canada in English? This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Dominic West went on to play Prince Charles in The Crown; Wendell Pierce took on Willy Loman in a London stage production of Death of a Salesman; Idris Elba starred in Luther, Thor and Cats; Michael K Williams burned brightly in Boardwalk Empire and others before his jarring death in September. Two Baltimore plainclothes police detectives were convicted Monday of racketeering, robbery and fraud in a trial involving a wide range of criminal . So you have to think thats making a difference. Discovery, Inc. or its subsidiaries and affiliates. At this point we are less than 10 min into the documentary. BALTIMORE A documentary film profiling Baltimore's police department in the wake of Detective Sean Suiter's on-duty death is set to hit television and streaming services next month. Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. But the character functions mostly to deliver exposition and make, or receive, the shows arguments. SONJA SOHN: I think the one thing that I had to zero in on or hone in on was the fact that there - that this was a Black man who appeared to be murdered, whose murder was unsolved and quite possibly could have been at the hands of law enforcement. Of racketeering, robbery and fraud in a trial involving a wide range of.... 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