In 2007, Mayor Sheila Dixon named Baltimore native and 26-year department veteran Frederick Bealefeld III as police commissioner.
Two years later, in May of 2009, Bealefeld went on local radio to decry light sentences for the sort of inane yet common atrocity that might easily have befallen Wallace or Dukie on The Wire.
Two schoolkids were abducted and tortured over a beef about a stolen PlayStation video game and the men convicted of the crime were given two years each.
“Those guys got fairly nominal sentences for some heinous stuff that they did to these kids,” said Bealefeld on the talk show.
“If it happened in a white neighborhood in any other community in this state, we’d still be talking about it … people would be talking about life sentences.”
SEASON THREE EPISODE GUIDE
“The city is worse than when I first came on. So what does that say about me? About my life?”
MAJOR HOWARD “BUNNY” COLVIN
The drug war is back, center stage: enter Marlo Stanfield.
Ambition takes the podium disguised as a promise of change in the form of Baltimore City Councilman Tommy Carcetti, “a venal pol with an idealistic streak,” according to the New Yorker, who – with his face scrubbed and hair combed nice – looks like a Catholic boy in his First Communion suit.
And real reform arrives sans hype and unannounced when the boundaries of a new neighborhood are drawn along an especially fuckedup stretch of inner city Baltimore.
“Hamsterdam,” with his grace Bunny Colvin as its benevolent dictator.
Within the strict boundaries of Hamsterdam, one may sling drugs with impunity. Try to do the same just one toke over the line and the cops will grind your teeth into paste.
And therein, literally, lies the drama.
“Would The Wire have been possible without [drug] prohibition?” asks Charles Allen, a Baton Rouge transplant to Los Angeles, one-time problem drug user and close student of the show.
“No corner boys, no Omar to rob them, no bodies in abandoned rowhouses, no Avon or Marlo or Stringer Bell. And no wire to eavesdrop on them.”
episode twenty-six
TIME AFTER TIME
“Don’t matter how many times you get burnt, you just keep doin’ the same.” – BODIE
Directed by Ed Bianchi
Story by Robert F. Colesberry & David Simon; teleplay by David Simon
KA-BOOM!
Season Three opens with a bang as the Franklin Terrace housing project – the “towers” and the “pit” from which the Barksdale gang has built its drug empire – are imploded to much fanfare.
“I’m kinda sad. Them towers be home to me,” says Poot to Bodie, who mocks him.
“You gonna cry over a housing project?” he asks.
Good times there, says Poot, popped my first nut in Chantay in the seventh grade. And she gave you VD more than once, laughs Bodie.
Doing the rah-rah at the countdown-to-a-new-era ceremonies in view of the demolition is Mayor Royce, promising new, moderately priced housing to replace the nightmare.
In the immediate sights of Lieutenant Daniels’s detail this year is the eastside drug organization headed by Proposition Joe Stewart, a reasonable man, as far as it goes, who lives by the dictum: Buy for one and sell for two.
Prop Joe has Cheese (played by Method Man), on the corner.
[“There’s always been this crowd of rappers who wanted to be on The Wire,” David Simon told Alan Sepinwall of the Newark, N. J. Star-Ledger. “And (Cheese) was the only guy who walked into a casting office and read and said, ‘Okay, tell me about the part.’ We didn’t take him because he was Method, we took him because he was the best read for Cheese.”]
On the wire, Detectives Lester Freamon and Roland Pryzbylewski – backed up by Officer Caroline Massey, she of the most discerning ears in Crabtown, listen as one of Cheese’s deputies yakety-yaks on his cell.
“Three months and we’ve yet to hear his [Cheese’s] voice on a phone,” notes Freamon with resignation.
With no real case to make, Daniels suggests – to the consternation bordering on contempt of Detective Jimmy McNulty – that they let the wire expire in two weeks.
With Avon in jail, Stringer Bell has moved the Barksdale organization’s headquarters into a funeral home, where he gathers the rank-and-file to announce a new day has dawned in West Baltimore.
“Game ain’t about territory no more,” says Bell. “It’s about product.”
At City Hall, where the bulk of the season’s off-the-street drama takes place, it’s about the product of that product: crime.
East Baltimore City Councilman Thomas J. Carcetti is taking new Police Commissioner Burrell and Deputy Commissioner William A. Rawls to task over the soaring rate of violence.
Out of sight of reporters, Carcetti tries to cut a deal with Burrell to get info on what the cops really need to take a bite out of crime, promising to take care of him in the long run. Burrell, who believes he owes his career to Mayor Clarence Royce [played by Glynn Turman], declines.
Royce will soon encourage Burrell to get the murder and felony rates down, to deflate Carcetti’s crusade.
Avon, a short-timer in prison, is introduced by Wee-Bey to Dennis “Cutty” Wise, a former veteran of the game about to be released after serving 14 years.
Avon tries to recruit Cutty and, facing nothing better, the ex-con considers it, though his ambivalence leads Barksdale to surmise, “The joint mighta broke him.”
Daniels’s promised quid-pro-quo promotion hits a serious snag at City Hall due to the political ambitions of his estranged wife Marla, though their separation is a secret.
“The Mayor,” Burrell tells Daniels, “is going to want to know who his friends are before he makes a new commander.”
At Camden Yards – where McNulty and Moreland take in a ballgame – Jimmy sulks in the upper deck while staring down at his kids in good seats next to his ex-wife and her new boyfriend. Bunk takes a call on his cell phone: fresh murders on the board.
Rawls and Burrell, charged by Royce to reduce crime, take all of their district commanders to task. Felonies, barks Rawls, must drop by five percent and murders must be kept below 275 bodies.
“I don’t care how you do it,” growls Rawls, “just fucking do it.”
episode twenty-seven
All DUE RESPECT
“There’s never been a paper bag.” – BUNNY COLVIN
Directed by Steve Shill
Story by David Simon & Richard Price; teleplay by Richard Price
Omar, pretending to be an old man in a wheelchair, cons his way into a Barksdale stash house with new lieutenant, Kimmy. The heist is flawless and they get away with drugs and cash.
Visiting Avon in prison, Stringer Bell tells his partner that the towers are gone.
“All that battlin’ we did to take them towers and now we out in the street with the rest of ’em we beat,” says Avon before Bell sends their corner boys to new intersections across the westside.
There, Bodie encounters Marlo, offering him good product at a good price, only to be told – with a coldness out of Avon’s go-fuck-yourself playbook – to roll out.
Without making eye contact, Marlo says, “I’m being a gentleman about it for the moment.”
[Jamie Hector, who plays Marlo, is known to be a gentleman. Playing Marlo, Hector has said, allows him to “explore that side of the coin.”]
At the Medical Examiner’s office, McNulty stirs the pot on D’Angelo Barksdale’s prison “suicide” from the year before. Looking at autopsy photos, he suspects that D was murdered and remains fixated on locking up Stringer Bell and making it stick.
Carcetti leans on Major Valchek, who plays department politics like a saloon poker champ, to broker a second meeting with Burrell in the hope that the commissioner will see his future no longer lies in protecting Mayor Royce.
“I should tell him what?” asks Valchek of the impertinent councilman. “Make nice or invest heavily in petr
oleum jelly?”
Burrell sees the wisdom in making nice and tells Carcetti that he’s having trouble getting police cruisers repaired and back on the street, thus leaving holes in patrols on every shift.
Carcetti makes good on his promise and 20 squad cars are soon back in service. And he lets Burrell know that the mayor, who cancelled an incoming class of police academy cadets claiming budget restraints, “fucked you … I know that money was in the budget.”
And again: I can be a better friend to you than Royce.
When Cheese’s pit bull loses to another dog in a stakes fight, Cheese shoots the animal. When it appears that the other side cheated, a dope dealer named Triage kills a soldier named Jelly who works for the winning dog’s owner, Dazz.
News of which soon crackles over the wire and into the ears of Greggs, Freamon, Prez, and Caroline.
Assuming Cheese is talking openly of murder, Greggs says: “[He’s] only a level below Proposition Joe. All of a sudden, this case has legs.”
The pressure from Rawls to get stats down does not relent and Daniels uses some wiretap info to make arrests. McNulty argues that the arrests will force them to reveal themselves and pushes his boss to bide his time.
Nonetheless, Cheese is arrested and brought in by Bunk and McNulty. It soon becomes clear that the case is, literally, a dog.
“We’re charging his ass,” says Bunk with more bravado than conviction.
“Improper disposal of an animal. Discharging a firearm in city limits,” adds McNulty.
“Animal cruelty, if we wanna run wild with it,” adds Bunk.
And the wire goes silent over the execution of a dog.
At the bar later, McNulty hits on Pearlman, who, having had enough bites out of that apple, goes home with Cedric Daniels.
At Greggs’s home, Cheryl is the resentful spouse and mother: Kima is never around and when she is, doesn’t take much interest in their new baby. Before long, Greggs is doing “the McNulty” – making excuses and stepping out.
When a Western District drug bust set up by Sergeant Carver in the Western goes to shit, Officer Dozerman – who’d been sent out alone – is shot.
“Fucking solo cars,” says Carver, further distressed that Dozerman’s gun is missing. “I shoulda teamed him. I fucked up.”
Leaving the scene of Dozerman’s shooting, Colvin visits “The Deacon” (played by Melvin Williams), and confides: “Tonight is a good night. Why? Because my shot cop didn’t die. And it hit me … This is what makes a good night on my watch: absence of a negative.”
Addressing his officers the next day, Bunny Colvin hints at an idea he’s been percolating since the my-way-or-the-highway, deliver-the-stats speech by Rawls.
He explains that “the corner is, was and always will be the poor man’s lounge” and that back in the day, drinking in public became a crime and cops spent a lot of time locking up folks for getting half-a-load on in public.
And then some forgotten wino put his shorty in a paper bag and the boys were able to drink in peace while the cops went about their sworn duties.
“Dozerman got shot last night trying to buy three vials,” Colvin says. “There’s never been a paper bag for drugs. Until now.”
And no one is quite sure what he’s saying.
episode twenty-eight
DEAD SOLDIERS
“The gods will not save you.” – BURRELL
Directed by Rob Bailey
Story by David Simon & Dennis Lehane; teleplay by Dennis Lehane
Crime keeps rising, and Rawls and Burrell publicly humiliate their commanders for the failure. Eastern District commander Marvin Taylor is fired by Burrell on the spot and immediately replaced by his second-in-command.
Omar – “the one guy who stood up against the institutions,” according to Ed Burns – cases another Barksdale stash house with his crew of Dante, Tosha and Kimmy.
When they pull the job, however, they are met with gunfire, some of it friendly, as Tosha – played by Edwina Findley – takes a bullet in the head from Dante. A Barksdale soldier also goes down.
The thug who shot Dozerman is found and thoroughly beaten by the cops, prompting a full confession, saying he sold the wounded cop’s gun to Peanut, a kid on the street.
On principle, Sergeant Landsman orders Bunk to recover the gun, prompting McNulty to quip: “In one of the most heavily armed cities in the known, gun-loving world, what do these ignorant motherfuckers care about one goddamn semi-auto, more or less?”
Carcetti leaks it to a Baltimore Sun reporter that Mayor Royce – penny-wise and dollar-foolish – is not going to pay for a police academy class this year.
Royce tells Burrell to fudge the bad news, tell the media whatever you need to tell them, just take your lumps and keep it away from me.
The mayor then publicly comes to the rescue of the nearly aborted class of cadets.
With the wire silenced, Daniels sends the detail on the trail of a drug dealer named Kintel “Prince K” Williamson, a Jamaican from Northwest Baltimore believed to have recently killed three people.
McNulty does not hear Daniels’s directive; he is inspecting the prison doorknob from which D’Angelo Barksdale allegedly hung himself.
Acting out the scene, McNulty puts the belt used by D’Angelo around his neck, discovering that it will not constrict tight enough to kill someone. Once suspicious, he is now convinced: D was murdered.
The following day, homicide detective Ray Cole dies while working out at the gym, the plot line needed to cover the unexpected passing of Robert F. Colesberry, the Wire producer who portrayed Cole with quiet humility.
While his fellow commanders are cooking down the stats with administrative sleight-of-hand, Bunny Colvin tells his people not to do the same.
At the next meeting of commanders called by Burrell and Rawls, Colvin is the only one not reporting a drop in crime and explains: “Sometimes the gods are uncooperative.”
To which Burrell replies: “If the gods are fucking you, you find a way to fuck them back. It’s Baltimore, gentlemen, the gods will not save you.”
Colvin’s numbers aren’t down but the revenue from Stanfield dealer Fruit is, and when Marlo demands to know why, he’s told that the Barksdale boys have set up shop around the way and are stealing customers.
When Marlo suggests that Fruit and the “young guns” give the Barksdale crew “a workout,” they directly do so, with baseball bats and a vengeance.
And then, in a meeting with trusted lieutenants back at the Western, Bunny Colvin unveils Hamsterdam: We are going to let the drug trade operate in one of three specifically outlined areas – spots that are especially bleak even by standards of the Baltimore ’hood – and nowhere else.
“You need to take the long view here,” Colvin tells his outraged staff. “Look at it this way, gentlemen: would you rather shoot at fish in the ocean? Or gather ’em all up in a few small barrels and start emptying your clips then?”
At Kavanaugh’s pub, friends and fellow cops have a final drink with the late Ray Cole, who lies in state upon the pool table.
“We’re police,” says Landsman, “so no lies between us: He wasn’t the greatest detective and he wasn’t the worst. He put down some good cases and he dogged a few bad ones. But the motherfucker had his moments. Yes, he fucking did.”
On another side of town, they are laying Tosha to rest; the funeral home is busy with Barksdale people looking to cap a grieving Omar.
Omar, however, mourns solo from across the street, smoking a cigarette in the shadows.
episode twenty-nine
HAMSTERDAM
“Why you got to go and fuck with the program?” – FRUIT
Directed by Ernest Dickerson
Story by David Simon & George Pelecanos; teleplay by George Pelecanos
At a westside community meeting, angry residents will not be mollified when cops and politicians try to say that they are in control of the drug war being waged on their streets.
“My
cousin Billy Gant cooperated,” says one resident of the ill-fated maintenance man from Season One. “Went downtown and testified. He deader than Tupac today.”
Colvin addresses the crowd and says: “Truth is, I can’t promise you it’s gonna get better. We can’t lock up the thousands that are out on those corners. There’s no place to put them if we could.
“This here is the world we’ve got, and it’s time that all of us had the good sense to at least admit that much.”
And then he admits that he isn’t sure what the answer is, but whatever it may be, it can’t be a lie.
Greggs and McNulty learn from Bubbles that some of the best narcotics real estate is now owned by “a young boy named Marlo.”
Along with that intel he provides the tag number of Marlo’s ride. Marlo, the cops learn, had been a suspect in a murder until the prime witness turned up dead.
Cutty, the recently released convict whom Avon sensed might have had his soldier’s heart cut out of him after years in prison, gives an honest day’s work a try with a gang of landscapers, most of them Hispanics.
When a fellow ex-con shows him that a fickle lawn mower needs to be primed before it will run, the foreman tells Cutty, “You wanna stay on the straight, ain’t gonna be no big reward to it. This is it right here.”
It is then that Cutty approaches the Barksdale group, via Slim Charles, saying he’s ready to go back to his chosen profession.
“Game’s the same,” Slim Charles tells him. “Just got more fierce.”
And Bunk keeps looking under every rock for Dozerman’s gun.
In the detail office, Freamon continues to harangue McNulty over his insubordination of Daniels, especially noting that Jimmy’s obsession with Stringer Bell is flagrant disrespect of a boss trying to do right by his people.
The Wire Page 19
