HBO’s upcoming true crime miniseries We Own This City has received a new trailer, showcasing snippets of a tension-filled narrative about an unprecedented level of corruption within the Baltimore police department. Based on the book We Own This City: A True Story of Crime, Cops, and Corruption by Baltimore Sun reporter Justin Fenton, the series chronicles a time of upheaval in the city, when the police's Gun Trace Task Force championed mass arrests and severe violence in place of actual police work, and riots were erupting all throughout Baltimore in protest of the suspicious death of Freddie Gray, a Black man who suspiciously died while in police custody.
The six-part series tells the story of the massive criminal conspiracy growing within the task force, spearheaded by Sgt. Wayne Jenkins (Jon Bernthal), the head of a plainclothes task force that hunted and robbed civilians and described as a "problem cop" by Nicole Steele (Wunmi Mosaku), an attorney investigating the practices of the Baltimore Police Department. The trailer highlights some of the morally corrupt activities committed by Jenkins and his task force, including taking money from raided homes to planting evidence, and makes clear that this is no small-scale corruption, but rather a war affecting the entire city that refused to cease. The series looks to pull exactly none of its punches, exposing a real-life story of a corrupted underbelly hiding just under the noses of Baltimore citizens.
The series, which reunites Bernthal with King Richard director Reinaldo Marcus Green, also stars Jamie Hector, McKinley Belcher III, Darrell Britt-Gibson, Josh Charles, Dagmara Domińczyk, Rob Brown, Don Harvey, David Corenswet, Larry Mitchell, Ian Duff, Delaney Williams, and Lucas Van Engen. Guest stars for the limited series include Treat Williams, Gabrielle Carteris, Tray Chaney, Domenick Lombardozzi, Thaddeus Street, and Jermaine Crawford, among others.
The six-hour series was created by The Wire executive producers George Pelecanos and David Simon, directed and executive produced by Green, executive produced by Nina K. Noble, Ed Burns, Kary Antholis, and written by Pelecanos, Simon, Burns, D. Watkins, and Bill Zorzi.
We Own This City premieres on HBO on April 25, and will be available to stream on HBO Max. Check out the full trailer below: