Wire-Tap-Dancing
HOME BOX OFFICE — THE WIRE — 2002–2008
This series is very difficult to cover or review because of the period when it was produced. That was under President George W. Bush and it started being aired after 9/11. The second fact is that we have to, understand Baltimore is a very special urban community where the African American population is vastly dominant. Let’s consider only the period before and during the broadcasting of this series. In other words, the whole city was a ghetto and the Black population was of course in the worst and most derelict neighborhoods.
African American population in Baltimore
Year Percentage
1990 59.2%
2000 64.3%
2010 63.7%
We also have to understand that a second demographic group was dominant in Baltimore and this is very clear in the first two seasons and still present, though more on the side, in the three latter seasons. And that will be the main problems considered in the first two seasons.
The first two seasons have to do mainly with the Harbor of Baltimore, a harbor that is dying at the time because it is entirely controlled by an absolutely corrupt Dockers’ Union held by two mafias, the Polish and the Greek mafias in Baltimore with vast connections across the East Coast and the US. Their general way of trafficking is simple. It mostly uses containers brought in by container ships. One container, only known of the dockers’ union people, has to disappear from the computerized log as soon as it is lifted from the ship. That particular container gets out of the harbor untraced and is delivered to some criminal network. Either the goods in the container are the front hiding drugs inside fridges for example, or whatever can be a proper case or vessel for heroin or cocaine packs. Or the goods are just blocking the vision of a specially devised back compartment that is not even ventilated so that no one can suspect foul play, and in this compartment, a certain number of women are hidden to be delivered to some prostitution rings.
It all came out when one of these unaccounted women came up dead in the harbor waters, and when a whole load of women was discovered dead in a container. It took two seasons to corner the dockers’ union chief who was the main organizer and beneficiary of this human trafficking, him and his family, mainly cousins or nephews once, twice or more removed. At that time the series was not so much concentrating on the Black community, but that changed completely when the harbor mafia was brought down, which I believe was only possible because the harbor itself was totally bankrupt because instead of using the profit of this commerce to invest to remain up at the top in the severe competition in the field of maritime container commerce that started raging in the world with the emergence of Asian companies and the rejection of flags of convenience, and in this last case the Greeks were number one. This evolution killed many harbors that did not follow the trend and it brought down Greece as a nation when that maritime traffic and industry collapsed in Greece, revealing the deep unhealthy social situation there. It took ten years to clean up the Augean stables and to bring the country and nation back on track. It also took the selling of the Piraeus harbor to the Chinese for it to become clean and profitable.
When this situation was dealt with, finished, classified, then the series turned to the situation of the African American community. It finally decided to go “way down in the hole” and check how it was in that ghetto. It insists mostly on the completely abandoned neighborhoods in the black section of the city that are not even safe as buildings, that are sometimes vacated in order to be pulled down but never get demolished and end up boarded up and being used by squatters or coffins for murdered gangsters. And the situation is so desolate that it would take pages to describe this vast urban wasteland with tens of thousands of people, mostly children, teenagers, and women, living in such conditions.
The second problem is drugs. Drugs are under the control of Black traffickers, at grassroots level (at street corners because a street corner provides four ways to run if you have to, instead of just two, and one being blocked by the oncoming gang fighters or police patrols, three escape routes in one case and only one in the other case, so it has to be street corners) and at middle level, that is to say, Baltimore, the city and the direct area around it, with necessarily a higher level which is either Black and in New York, or Polish and Greek and it is an invisible and unidentified white network at a wider level. That means Baltimore is the battlefield of two or three gangs trying to take control of the whole city and at the same time, they have been obliged to accept some kind of zoning policy. This situation is a pure and simple war situation with constant guerrilla warfare and firearms killings. The gangs can only survive and keep some balance if they regularly kill some of the underlings or small captains of other gangs, each gang against the two or three other gangs. This leads to one or two or three leaders who are untouched and untouchable. Normally. Sooner or later there is always someone who will have the guts or the unconscious dumbness to kill a chief. To do that this kamikaze had better be young and small because all adults or even teenagers, not to mention all women, are suspicious and cannot approach the “bosses.”
The third problem, that could be the solution, is education. No money, no qualified teachers, no policy, no means of any sort to bring this black population out of their total cultural fallow wasteland where becoming a corner operator is the only future they can imagine if they are boys, and being a ghetto courtesan of some kind, in other words, a slut or a whore, for anyone who wants such services, if they are girls. Some teachers believe they can make a difference but we are in the years of the Iraq war and trillions of dollars have to be found to pay for this never-ending war so that federal money was becoming scarce for education and other services, the police particularly as we are going to see. As for education, there is no real possibility to educate these young people out of the ghetto, out of poverty, and we have to be clear on one point: the drug traffickers, the holdup bandits, the hijackers, the kidnappers, all of them are Black in the ghetto and all their victims are Black too. The gangs are not exploiting the whites. They are exclusively exploiting the Blacks, and from time to time but rarely victimizing Asians. This is the acme of capitalistic greed and exploitation. The whole series does not give us one single case of a child becoming a teenager and managing to get out of this ghettoic rawkus alienation through education. We are not even shown any picture of a college in this city of Baltimore. Colleges are off-limits.
That leads to the last problem: the police. Under the Black mayor in three seasons, the police have money for overtime and cars, but it is in the hands of the friends, associates and buddies of the Black mayor. If you are not Black, no way up except if you accept to do the dirty work of covering up the extraordinary level of crime, particularly blood crime, in the city. It is this rotten situation that brings in 2004 or 2006 a new Black District Attorney who is supposed to be clean. How long will it last? And a new white mayor who captures a section of the Black vote by promising a special effort for the schools and special treatment for the police that would be cleaned up. But that mayor is a mayor and of course, he is a politician with ambition, and within two years he manages to be elected governor of the state of Maryland. He keeps part of his promise for schools, though we are not shown the result. But he does not keep his promise for the regeneration of the police, and this time a couple of impatient rebellious cops, one white, one black, cheat with their police department, with the city council and with the press: they use illegal wire-tapping equipment to be able to penetrate the communication among the top leaders of the gangs to manage the tracking of a special delivery. But they need extra personnel, extra cars and extra money for overtime. To achieve this target they create from nothing at all a serial killer fable among the homeless in the city, by using and manipulating the killing of homeless people mostly by other homeless people and mostly for petty grievances, and by attaching a red ribbon to the wrist of a few victims, organizing the “fake kidnapping” of a wasted distant cousin of one of these two cops. The press is im-‘press’-ed and reacts at once, revealing a lot about these homeless people and at the same time bringing a lot of attention to the police situation that cannot cope with such problems. The two cops get the means they want to fight against this phantasmatic serial killer, and they use these means to corner and arrest the main Black drug leader and capture an enormous delivery of cocaine and heroin, plus a great number of underlings. One of the middle-of-the-way underlings will accept to take several murders under his responsibility, the main leader could be concerned with, but an important white lawyer often defending the gang people is revealed to be corrupt too at grand jury level, and then this lawyer, the DA office and the white female deputy (who is the mistress of the Black deputy police chief I am going to deal with later, and this one is married to a Black lady who wants to make a career in Baltimore’s politics and eventually become Mayoress, isn’t that all simple?) work out a deal. The main gang leader will walk free and keep his capital but with a clear understanding, he will not deal with the drug market anymore. One middle of the way underling will serve a moderate amount of time for several murders, and the others will serve moderate time for drug dealing.
On the other hand, the police department will be completely restructured in the hands of a white associate of the mayor who in the meantime is elected governor. The two main cops who organized all this underground police-trafficking are sent back to the sidewalk beat or so but without losing any pension rights. They will survive. And the main “victims” are the white Head of the PD who is ousted but becomes the head of the State Police, and his direct black deputy who resigns because he refuses to doctor the crime statistics for a few quarters to help the White Mayor to be elected governor. Because altogether all that does not change a basic fact: crime is growing and statistics, when not doctored, show clearly the casualties are not in any way on a downhill trend.
To give an overall opinion, I will say I am rather disappointed by the series because it remains entirely locked up within a small group of people, hardly ever showing what the real state of mind of the masses in this community is. Everything is seen as being nothing but circumstances that have to be used by the politicians for their own good. It is in a way very sad. And apart from the opening and closing song, the culture of this Black community is hardly ever explored or really used. It is true it is a good song. Here are the lyrics of it.
Way Down in the Hole
Tom Waits
When you walk through the garden
You gotta watch your back
Well I beg your pardon
Walk the straight and narrow track
If you walk with Jesus
He’s gonna save your soul
You gotta keep the devil
Way down in the hole
He’s got the fire and the fury
At his command
Well you don’t have to worry
If you hold on to Jesus’ hand
We’ll all be safe from Satan
When the thunder rolls
We just gotta help me keep the devil
Way down in the hole
All the angels sing about Jesus’ mighty sword
And they’ll shield you with their wings
And keep you close to the lord
Don’t pay heed to temptation
For his hands are so cold
You gotta help me keep the devil
Way down in the hole
Down in the hole, down in the hole
Down in the hole, down in the hole
Down in the hole, down in the hole
You gotta help me keep the devil
Down in the hole
But unluckily even walking with Jesus is not shown really, except marginally with the regeneration of the drug addict Bubbles in the last season, but because a younger teenager he had taken under his wing dies of an overdose when this young man finds Bubbles’ small drug hoard. It is love, but not for Jesus, that leads him out of the ghetto and out of drugs with a job in some kind of shelter for the human wrecks that are surviving while waiting to die of dereliction and alienation.
But if you want to learn Black and white urban slang direct from Baltimore, you will have here a beautiful case and in no time, you might start speaking like a true Baltimorean Black gang mobster or Black police workhorse or plodder.
Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU
