We Own This City

We Own This City: A True Story of Crime, Cops and Corruption in an American City by Justin Fenton

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Crime Reporter for the Baltimore Sun Justin Fenton covers one of the biggest scandals in Baltimore Police history in an absorbing account of Wayne Jenkins and the Gun Trace Task Force (the GTTF).
In the wake of the Freddie Gray riots of 2015 and the subsequent spike in crime--murders hitting 342 a year--a group of elite cops are called upon by police leadership to do something about it; To get the guns off the street, to take down the bad guys by any means necessary.

In that chaos, a group led by Sgt Wayne Jenkins, a gung-ho hard charging officer who is not afraid to bend the rules to get things done, take this opportunity to abuse the citizens of Baltimore in a wide-ranging campaign of robbing drug dealers and setting up innocent people and hoping that the charges stick (they more often do not). Jenkins’ reckless barely legal tactics cast a wide net, often landing the innocent in with the guilty. He kept a supply of BB guns to plant on crime scenes in case someone needed to offer cover for a bad shooting (“I thought it was a gun, what was I supposed to do?”) And in many cases, the culture he fostered meant that his men took money off of suspects, splitting it amongst his group of dirty officers while management looked the other way (or maybe they didn’t know, but who believes that?).

Meanwhile, there are victims who suffer for this, many of whom are falsely imprisoned, some who are killed as the result of one of Jenkins’ many reckless driving adventures. Many whose lives are, at the very least sidetracked by the court system in which they were brought into because of a bad arrest by Jenkins. Also, the story of Officer Sean Suiter and his mysterious slaying in Harlem Park one day before he was to testify in the GTTF case is explored. For the record, it is officially considered an unsolved homicide. (Also for the record: I don’t for one minute believe that he killed himself.)

I am a little biased and invested in things relating to my adopted home city of Baltimore. This is in fact the second book I have read about the GTTF. But I must say, this one is better than I Got a Monster. Fenton has written a terrific account of all of this. Well-documented and novelistic, We Own This City is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the nuances of why Baltimore is the way it is. It goes far beyond simple knee jerk reactions that people offer, who often don’t live here and don’t care one way or the other.






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