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  • We Own This City

  • A True Story of Crime, Cops, and Corruption
  • Written by: Justin Fenton
  • Narrated by: Dion Graham
  • Length: 9 hrs and 41 mins
  • 4.6 out of 5 stars (21 ratings)

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We Own This City

Written by: Justin Fenton
Narrated by: Dion Graham
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Publisher's Summary

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE • The astonishing true story of “one of the most startling police corruption scandals in a generation” (The New York Times), from the Pulitzer Prize-nominated reporter who exposed a gang of criminal cops and their yearslong plunder of an American city

NOW AN HBO SERIES FROM THE WIRE CREATOR DAVID SIMON AND GEORGE PELECANOS

“A work of journalism that not only chronicles the rise and fall of a corrupt police unit but can stand as the inevitable coda to the half-century of disaster that is the American drug war.”—David Simon

Baltimore, 2015. Riots are erupting across the city as citizens demand justice for Freddie Gray, a twenty-five-year-old Black man who has died under suspicious circumstances while in police custody. Drug and violent crime are surging, and Baltimore will reach its highest murder count in more than two decades: 342 homicides in a single year, in a city of just 600,000 people. Facing pressure from the mayor’s office—as well as a federal investigation of the department over Gray’s death—Baltimore police commanders turn to a rank-and-file hero, Sergeant Wayne Jenkins, and his elite plainclothes unit, the Gun Trace Task Force, to help get guns and drugs off the street.

But behind these new efforts, a criminal conspiracy of unprecedented scale was unfolding within the police department. Entrusted with fixing the city’s drug and gun crisis, Jenkins chose to exploit it instead. With other members of the empowered Gun Trace Task Force, Jenkins stole from Baltimore’s citizens—skimming from drug busts, pocketing thousands in cash found in private homes, and planting fake evidence to throw Internal Affairs off their scent. Their brazen crime spree would go unchecked for years. The results were countless wrongful convictions, the death of an innocent civilian, and the mysterious death of one cop who was shot in the head, killed just a day before he was scheduled to testify against the unit.

In this urgent book, award-winning investigative journalist Justin Fenton distills hundreds of interviews, thousands of court documents, and countless hours of video footage to present the definitive account of the entire scandal. The result is an astounding, riveting feat of reportage about a rogue police unit, the city they held hostage, and the ongoing struggle between American law enforcement and the communities they are charged to serve.

©2021 Justin Fenton (P)2021 Random House Audio

What the critics say

“Fenton populates his narrative with a network of officers, informants, and street dealers, all with different motivations and interests.... The overall effect is to capture the disorienting, churning quality of a city where the good guys and bad guys aren’t easily distinguished.... [Fenton] shows how, in our zeal to combat crime, we have allowed institutions to produce it.” (The New York Times Book Review)

“Baltimore’s grim realities have been mined by talented writers like D. Watkins, Wes Moore, and, most famously, celebrated author and TV producer David Simon, whose books and television series - Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood and The Wire - deftly illuminated Charm City’s complex web of problems. One could be excused for wondering whether there is any more to say about Baltimore and crime. But the gripping new book We Own This City: A True Story of Crime, Cops, and Corruption puts that concern to rest.” (The Washington Post)

“Fenton tells a story of bad people and bad attitudes.... His book reveals the way systemic discrimination operates, whom it affects and how it is sustained. His narrative is brisk and engaging.” (London Review of Books)

What listeners say about We Own This City

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Playing Cops and Robbers

Power corrupts. Give a guy a badge and a gun and you get trouble.
Narrator is oftentimes hard to understand because he eats his words under his breath.

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Must listen

Incredible. Even better than the HBO series that was based off this book. Must listen.

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