We Own This City

Published:25 Feb 2021

Baltimore, 2015. Riots were erupting across the city as citizens demanded justice for Freddie Gray, a twenty-five-year-old black man who died in police custody. At the same time, drug and violent crime were once again surging.

For years, Sgt Wayne Jenkins and his team of plain-clothed officers – the Gun Trace Task Force – were the city’s lauded and decorated heroes. But all the while they had been skimming from the drug busts they made, pocketing thousands in cash found in private homes and planting fake evidence to throw Internal Affairs off their scent. Because who would believe the dealers, the smugglers or people who had simply been going about their daily business over the word of the city’s elite task force?Now, in light of their spectacular trial of late 2018, and in a work of astounding reportage and painstaking self-discovery, Justin Fenton has pieced together a shocking story of systemic corruption.