We Own This City

by Justin Fenton

True Crime

Crime

Politics

352 Pages

"Fenton's investigative journalism is masterful—We Own This City reads like a crime thriller but the horror is that every word is true."

Synopsis

Baltimore, 2015. As riots consumed the city in the wake of Freddie Gray's death in police custody and citizens demanded justice, drug crime and violence surged through the streets. Against this chaotic backdrop, Sergeant Wayne Jenkins and his Gun Trace Task Force were celebrated as the city's heroes—lauded, decorated officers making high-profile drug busts and getting guns off the streets. But behind their public accolades, Jenkins and his team were operating as a criminal enterprise with badges. For years, they systematically robbed drug dealers and innocent citizens alike, pocketing thousands in cash from private homes, planting fake evidence, and using their authority to evade Internal Affairs investigations. Who would believe the word of dealers, smugglers, or ordinary people going about their daily lives over the city's elite task force? The answer came in late 2018, when their spectacular trial exposed the shocking scope of their corruption. Through astounding reportage and painstaking investigation, Baltimore Sun reporter Justin Fenton pieces together this devastating story of systemic police corruption. We Own This City reveals how power unchecked becomes predatory, how institutional failures enable criminality, and how a culture of impunity can transform those meant to protect into those who prey—all while a city grapples with the twin crises of police violence and surging crime.

Our Take

Justin Fenton's We Own This City stands as essential reading in the conversation about policing in America. As a Baltimore Sun reporter who covered the Gun Trace Task Force scandal from the beginning, Fenton brings insider access and journalistic rigor to this devastating account of institutional failure. What makes this book extraordinary is how it contextualizes the Task Force's crimes within Baltimore's broader history of police corruption, failed reforms, and the impossible position the city found itself in—needing aggressive policing to combat violence while that same aggression enabled predatory officers. Fenton doesn't offer easy answers or simple villains; instead, he traces how systemic problems, inadequate oversight, and a culture that rewarded results over ethics created conditions where Jenkins and his team could operate for years. The book reads with the propulsive tension of a crime thriller, but every shocking detail is meticulously documented fact. Fenton's reporting on the victims—both the criminals robbed by police and the innocent citizens caught in their schemes—humanizes the impact of corruption in ways statistics cannot. The timing of the scandal, occurring as Baltimore grappled with the Freddie Gray protests, creates tragic irony that Fenton handles with appropriate weight. For readers who appreciated The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist by Radley Balko or David Simon's Homicide, this offers similarly incisive examination of criminal justice dysfunction. It's investigative journalism at its finest—clear-eyed, thorough, and absolutely essential for understanding policing, accountability, and power in American cities.