Twenty years ago when “The Wire” debuted on HBO, few people outside of Baltimore noticed. Though critics applauded, “The Wire” struggled initially to find its audience and narrowly avoided cancellation.
Michael K. Williams, plays Omar Little, Baltimore's most-feared stickup artist, on the HBO cable television series,"The Wire."
But over the years, the show gained traction. Now, “The Wire” is a cultural phenomenon. It routinely makes lists of the greatest TV shows of all time.“The Wire” became those things in large part because creators David Simon, a former police reporter for The Baltimore Sun, and Ed Burns, a former Baltimore homicide detective and middle school teacher, aimed to do more than just tell a riveting human story.
“When Ed was in the school system, he saw how the metrics they were using to measure progress were flawed. In the police department, the metrics of success were guns and dope on the table. If we arrest everybody, we make the city safer. That kind of logic was rewarded politically.” In 2002, the year “The Wire’ debuted, Baltimore recorded 254 homicides. There were 338 homicides in 2021, the seventh year in a row that slayings have topped 300. And violence in the city is trending to hit that figure again this year.
The series explored the hardships endured by blue-collar workers in Rust Belt cities like Baltimore as manufacturing declined. As their paychecks shrink, the dockworkers in “The Wire” turn to dealing drugs. “We could create apprenticeships and work to renovate and rehab our housing stock,” said Harris, a former Green Party candidate for mayor in 2016 and for the state legislature in 2018. “This is an opportunity to create jobs and to put a city of blue-collar employees back to work.”Councilman Thomas"Tommy" Carcetti appears in a scene from"The Wire."
“That’s a lesson I preach to young elected officials across the country,” said Scott, who worked as a young“I tell them, you will only get where you want to go if you focus on the job you have today. We need officials who will do the right thing, not the popular thing, even if it means that they get unelected.”From left, Jermaine Crawford, Maestro Harrell, Tristan Wilds and Julito McCullum portray students in the Baltimore school system in the fourth season of"The Wire.
Baltimore City Public Schools CEO Sonja Santelises declined an interview request. In an email, a district spokesman said he doesn’t think “The Wire’s” depiction of city schools is wholly accurate.