Police Corruption in Baltimore | "We Own This City" with Justin Fenton | 5

American Scandal

Wondery

True Crime, Exhibit C, Society & Culture, History, Documentary, History Daily, American History Tellers, Lindsay Graham

4.6 • 18.7K Ratings

🗓️ 20 February 2024

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Journalist Justin Fenton covered the Gun Trace Task Force scandal for the Baltimore Sun. He sat through the trials and heard testimony from accused cops and their victims. He reported on the ripple effects of the scandal, in the police department and in the community. And then David Simon, creator of The Wire, called and asked Fenton to write a book. Today, Lindsay speaks with Justin Fenton, author of We Own This City, which was made into an HBO limited series by the same name.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Wundry Plus subscribers can binge new seasons of American scandal early and ad free right now.
0:05.7	Join Wundry Plus in the Wundery app or on Apple Podcasts. Wondering.
0:48.6	From Woundree, I'm Lindsay Graham, and this is American scandal. When the FBI arrested seven members of the Gun Trace Task Force in 2017, they exposed a massive and deeply embarrassing betrayal of the public trust.
0:53.0	That betrayal became synonymous with the names of Baltimore police officers
0:57.0	like Wayne Jenkins, Mamadou Gondo, and Daniel Hersal.
1:00.0	But the police department's issues ran deeper than just a few bad apples.
1:05.4	The FBI had already investigated the Baltimore Police Department before, and the criminal
1:10.1	activities of officers like Wayne Jenkins stretched back years, predating their involvement
1:14.8	with a gun-traced task force.
1:17.2	Jenkins and his corrupt colleagues planted drugs and guns on victims.
1:20.5	They falsified arrest reports.
1:22.0	They stole money from the people they arrested.
1:24.0	Stole and sold drugs they confiscated and they lied about what they were doing over and over again.
1:30.0	This behavior came to a halt only when arrests began in March 2017.
1:35.2	The scandal caused substantial fallout.
1:38.0	Over 2,000 cases associated with the crooked officers were affected.
1:42.4	The city of Baltimore settled
1:44.1	hefty lawsuits and several members of the gun-traced task force remain in prison
1:48.4	today serving sentences of up to 25 years. But also in the wake of the scandal there have been real efforts to reform the Baltimore
1:56.0	police department and according to my guest Justin Fenton, some of those reforms are beginning to show
2:00.8	results. Fenton is an investigative reporter for the Baltimore Banner.
2:05.0	Prior to that, he was with the Baltimore son,
	...

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