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I Got a Monster: The Rise and Fall of America's Most Corrupt Police Squad
The explosive true story of America's most corrupt police unit, the Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF), which terrorized the city of Baltimore for half a decade.
When Baltimore police sergeant Wayne Jenkins said he had a monster, he meant he had found a big-time drug dealer—one that he wanted to rob. This is the story of Jenkins and the Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF), a super group of dirty detectives who exploited some of America’s greatest guns, drugs, toxic masculinity, and hypersegregation.
In the upside-down world of the GTTF, cops were robbers and drug dealers were the perfect victims, because no one believed them. When the federal government finally arrested the GTTF for robbery and racketeering in 2017, the stories of victims began to come out, revealing a vast criminal enterprise operating within the Baltimore Police Department.
Cops planted heroin to cover up a fatal crash that resulted from a botched robbery. They stole hundreds of thousands of dollars, faked video evidence, and forged a letter trying to break up the marriage of one of their victims to keep his wife from paying a lawyer. And a homicide detective was killed the day before he was scheduled to testify against the crooked cops.
I Got a Monster is the shocking history of the rise and fall of the most corrupt cops in America from Baynard Woods and Brandon Soderberg.
When Baltimore police sergeant Wayne Jenkins said he had a monster, he meant he had found a big-time drug dealer—one that he wanted to rob. This is the story of Jenkins and the Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF), a super group of dirty detectives who exploited some of America’s greatest guns, drugs, toxic masculinity, and hypersegregation.
In the upside-down world of the GTTF, cops were robbers and drug dealers were the perfect victims, because no one believed them. When the federal government finally arrested the GTTF for robbery and racketeering in 2017, the stories of victims began to come out, revealing a vast criminal enterprise operating within the Baltimore Police Department.
Cops planted heroin to cover up a fatal crash that resulted from a botched robbery. They stole hundreds of thousands of dollars, faked video evidence, and forged a letter trying to break up the marriage of one of their victims to keep his wife from paying a lawyer. And a homicide detective was killed the day before he was scheduled to testify against the crooked cops.
I Got a Monster is the shocking history of the rise and fall of the most corrupt cops in America from Baynard Woods and Brandon Soderberg.
305 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 21, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 208 reviews
July 23, 2020
A true crime thriller for the age of Defund; if you're at all wondering why so many Americans think we'd be better off starting from scratch with public safety, this case study of a squad of officers who used the Baltimore Police Department as, essentially, an organized-crime syndicate should prove to be eye-opening. Drawing on years of close reporting (much of it started with the late Baltimore City Paper-- itself a good reminder of how much has been lost with the disappearance of independent, free weeklies...) the authors show how poverty and blackness is easily turned into "criminality" in America, creating a system which turns millions of our neighbors into potential prey for the very people whom we claim are "protecting" them.
July 27, 2020
This is one where the story itself is more compelling than the writing. Being a Baltimore native, I was looking forward to this as I only know the broad strokes of the Gun Trace Task Force case. I really like Baynard Woods' work. But the telling of the story is dull, leaning hard on recorded dialogue while not really having a narrative flow. Also, while I was glad to get the perspectives of the task force and crusading attorney Ivan Bates, I would've liked to have known more as to how the feds built a case right under the noses of the Baltimore City Police Department. There's a story there. Maybe they're not talking because the reverbs of the case itself are ongoing? I just felt like that was a big piece left out of the story. Justin Fenton is apparently writing his own take on it and I can't wait to read it.
August 13, 2020
Extreme case of confirmation bias.
July 27, 2020
I won this in a Goodreads giveaway. Interesting but did not flow well.
December 12, 2020
This story is bonkers - you'll just shake your head at the complete disregard for ethical public service reading this. The second half of the book has a better rhythm than the first half in its storytelling and its way of piecing threads together. At first, I almost considered DNFing because I really couldn't keep the officers straight in my head (I looked up pictures of them online multiple times). I also think we needed a bit more context about corruption in BPD to get us started, including the culture of BPD, internal affairs investigations, higher-ups coaching police officers in trouble, and the focus on numbersnumbersnumbers.
November 10, 2020
2.5 Stars!
“There’s not a clear delineation between racist and cop doing his job.”
I recently read somewhere, I think it was in a Chuck Palahniuk book, that in America most non-fiction books sell upon their subtitle (something I can’t stop noticing now) but the one here made me laugh in that, I automatically thought, Jeez! Which one?... we are certainly spoiled for choice, LAPD! NYPD?...and many more, but no those two obvious ones were not the one in question, but instead it was the dear old BPD. Ooooooooh Baltimore! Man it’s hard…As Randy Newman sang.
Too many criminals quickly became confusing, and as helpful as the CAST OF CHARACTERS section at the start was it also doubles up as part spoiler too. Amateur touches like mentioning “made famous by the Serial podcast” at least three times after someone’s name, as if we didn’t believe them all the other times?...
It doesn’t take long to get into the action, this has echoes of Training Day meets The Wire with a sprinkling of George Pelecanos, but before you get too excited I would say that this neither has the drama, craft or impact of any of those. The shared commonality is strictly confined in terms of shared geography and/or subject matter.
The problem with this book is that it never really lifts off the page, it just seems too flat, with no attempt to get a little deeper. For me this read like a half-hearted long form article that you would find in a weekend magazine in the paper, and it feels as if it was padded out and then repackaged as a book. This isn’t a bad read, but there are just so many better ones out there which do a far better job of telling these sorts of stories.
August 2, 2020
I'm a new Baltimorean and the BPD/corruption, crime, murder rates are in the news daily, in some form. This story is riveting and highlighted how naive to the 'real' world of policing & crime (& how those lines blur so easily) I am.
My one issue with the book was the flow/timelines.....challenging to follow at some points.
My one issue with the book was the flow/timelines.....challenging to follow at some points.
March 27, 2022
Really interesting book. I remember the Freddie Grey case but I didn’t know anything about this task force or this corruption case. This is more of a narrative retelling of the events of the crimes these cops committed and the trial more than a really in-depth research project. I think this was a good choice and I really enjoyed reading how this whole task force collapsed under the weight of their crimes.
December 15, 2020
I was an editor in a Baltimore college paper as the Gun Trace Taskforce's corruption came to light. I had no idea what was going on and had to ask the arts editor, a Baltimore native, to explain what the GTTF was on numerous occasions. I was not very good at my job.
The story is complicated. There is a lengthy cast of characters in this book — cops, robbers, cops who are robbers, crooks who talk to the feds, lawyers and leaks. It doesn't help that there are at least 5 people with the last name Davis. However, in this mess of alliances, backstabbing, and grandstanding, Baynard and Brandon never lose sight of the morals at stake. A group of cops robbed people of cash, guns, and drugs — pocketing the cash and selling the rest. Innocent people lost their freedom, some lost their lives. Though I admittedly lost track of all the Davises in the book, Brandon and Baynard maintained an ethical clarity of how fucked up it was to see cops repeatedly lie while prosecutors turned a blind eye. Malfeasance was the norm and they refuse to let any indignation subside.
This book is a hammer striking a set of Russian nesting dolls — but not in a way that it exposes some gritty "real" Baltimore as an innermost doll to gawk at. Instead it shatters illusions over policing and criminal justice. It shatters the distance where I, a so-called newspaper editor, could've lived persistently ignorant of a massive violation of public trust happening a couple neighborhoods away. This book presents a "real" version of Baltimore, not because it's written like a dramatic thriller that men obsessed with the Wire would salivate over, but because it is rigorously reported and researched. A group of Baltimore cops, with the backing of state institutions, became the most egregious criminals. It's real because it's true.
The story is complicated. There is a lengthy cast of characters in this book — cops, robbers, cops who are robbers, crooks who talk to the feds, lawyers and leaks. It doesn't help that there are at least 5 people with the last name Davis. However, in this mess of alliances, backstabbing, and grandstanding, Baynard and Brandon never lose sight of the morals at stake. A group of cops robbed people of cash, guns, and drugs — pocketing the cash and selling the rest. Innocent people lost their freedom, some lost their lives. Though I admittedly lost track of all the Davises in the book, Brandon and Baynard maintained an ethical clarity of how fucked up it was to see cops repeatedly lie while prosecutors turned a blind eye. Malfeasance was the norm and they refuse to let any indignation subside.
This book is a hammer striking a set of Russian nesting dolls — but not in a way that it exposes some gritty "real" Baltimore as an innermost doll to gawk at. Instead it shatters illusions over policing and criminal justice. It shatters the distance where I, a so-called newspaper editor, could've lived persistently ignorant of a massive violation of public trust happening a couple neighborhoods away. This book presents a "real" version of Baltimore, not because it's written like a dramatic thriller that men obsessed with the Wire would salivate over, but because it is rigorously reported and researched. A group of Baltimore cops, with the backing of state institutions, became the most egregious criminals. It's real because it's true.
August 8, 2020
Finished the psychological gore fest of I Got A Monster. Well written documentation of a group of cops who didn’t let death or shattered lives get in the way of piling up sacks of dirty $$ & gilding their county homes.
I kept thinking of the many cops I’ve had come thru the shop over the years, most mainly crime fiction readers, & the favorite book of almost every one was/is The Friends of Eddie Coyle. Great nightblack book that shows heartbreakingly how police & criminals are entwined & often with little difference between them. (The GTTF far outcrimed the majority of dealers they were busting.)
Just a revolving platter of who the next sucker is to be the soft sacrifice to serve up to the system. Someone who can be removed from play without disturbing either side of the game too much, but keep up appearance of law moving forward.
I Got A Monster should be key evidence in moving money away from militarizing the police & giving them free reign & maybe try investing in things like education & job training so that the big money snake eating its tail of law enforcement & crime won’t be the only game in town.
I kept thinking of the many cops I’ve had come thru the shop over the years, most mainly crime fiction readers, & the favorite book of almost every one was/is The Friends of Eddie Coyle. Great nightblack book that shows heartbreakingly how police & criminals are entwined & often with little difference between them. (The GTTF far outcrimed the majority of dealers they were busting.)
Just a revolving platter of who the next sucker is to be the soft sacrifice to serve up to the system. Someone who can be removed from play without disturbing either side of the game too much, but keep up appearance of law moving forward.
I Got A Monster should be key evidence in moving money away from militarizing the police & giving them free reign & maybe try investing in things like education & job training so that the big money snake eating its tail of law enforcement & crime won’t be the only game in town.
February 22, 2021
I take this one somewhat personally because it is the city in which I live; the city that I consider my adopted hometown where I have spent 27 years working and writing and performing and making a life. I am biased for it and enraged at so much of what happens in this truly excellent book.
In 2017, Officer Wayne Jenkins and 6 others members of the Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF) were arrested by the FBI on multiple charges relating to their work on this special unit of the Baltimore City Police. For years, Jenkins and his men were at the heart of a criminal conspiracy to steal money from citizens, plant evidence on people they wanted to nail, and engage in reckless behavior behind the shield of the law.
This unit operated in response to the violence and gun deaths that have plagued Baltimore for years. The murder rate in this city has topped 300 a year for the past 6 years. In a post-Freddie Gray Baltimore, the Gun Trace Task Force flourished, taking guns off the street, making busts and pocketing cash along the way. And the scatter-shot approach to policing, which often swept up the innocent with the guilty was ripe with corruption and bad arrests.
In this mix is a cast of dirty cops, drug dealers, collaborators, victims and lawyers. One such lawyer, Ivan Bates had tangled with Jenkins on many occasions and in time became determined to do something about the corruption. This whole thing is like real life Bad Lieutenant. Cops ripping off drug dealers, planting evidence, roughing people up. The argument could be made that “oh, who cares? They were just drug dealers?” But the job is not to throw shit against the wall to see what sticks. The job is not to rob “bad” people. The job is to enforce the law and protect the public.
I Got a Monster is an absorbing read. I take note of the fact that the States Attorney comes off terribly. Marilyn Mosby is a peripheral figure in all this. The corrupt Gun Trace Task Force flourished under her. And they were subsequently brought down without her help. She does what is politically expedient: Dropping charges in case brought by dirty officers before investigating; she’s not thoughtful or methodical. All these arguments were initially used by Ivan Bates in his campaign to replace her as State’s Attorney, which is reported in the book. Ultimately, he had to drop that line of attack since he was a defense attorney and going against the GTTF would impact his clients. (the race was spilt three ways and Mosby won).
I Got a Monster is likely to be just one of many books about the GTTF. I know people outside the city love to dump on it. But this book exposes a small sliver of one of the many ways in which local leadership fails the citizens of this city every day.
In 2017, Officer Wayne Jenkins and 6 others members of the Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF) were arrested by the FBI on multiple charges relating to their work on this special unit of the Baltimore City Police. For years, Jenkins and his men were at the heart of a criminal conspiracy to steal money from citizens, plant evidence on people they wanted to nail, and engage in reckless behavior behind the shield of the law.
This unit operated in response to the violence and gun deaths that have plagued Baltimore for years. The murder rate in this city has topped 300 a year for the past 6 years. In a post-Freddie Gray Baltimore, the Gun Trace Task Force flourished, taking guns off the street, making busts and pocketing cash along the way. And the scatter-shot approach to policing, which often swept up the innocent with the guilty was ripe with corruption and bad arrests.
In this mix is a cast of dirty cops, drug dealers, collaborators, victims and lawyers. One such lawyer, Ivan Bates had tangled with Jenkins on many occasions and in time became determined to do something about the corruption. This whole thing is like real life Bad Lieutenant. Cops ripping off drug dealers, planting evidence, roughing people up. The argument could be made that “oh, who cares? They were just drug dealers?” But the job is not to throw shit against the wall to see what sticks. The job is not to rob “bad” people. The job is to enforce the law and protect the public.
I Got a Monster is an absorbing read. I take note of the fact that the States Attorney comes off terribly. Marilyn Mosby is a peripheral figure in all this. The corrupt Gun Trace Task Force flourished under her. And they were subsequently brought down without her help. She does what is politically expedient: Dropping charges in case brought by dirty officers before investigating; she’s not thoughtful or methodical. All these arguments were initially used by Ivan Bates in his campaign to replace her as State’s Attorney, which is reported in the book. Ultimately, he had to drop that line of attack since he was a defense attorney and going against the GTTF would impact his clients. (the race was spilt three ways and Mosby won).
I Got a Monster is likely to be just one of many books about the GTTF. I know people outside the city love to dump on it. But this book exposes a small sliver of one of the many ways in which local leadership fails the citizens of this city every day.
February 14, 2021
Using the transcripts of the case the book mostly wrote itself. But it didn't touch many of the obvious questions that the story brings up. For example, I've been in Baltimore almost five years and a frequent question that comes up is: How deep is the corruption? It's a touchy subject, because many don't want to attack Baltimore, it's like kicking a dude when he's down. And they want to have some pride in where they live. But you can't write this book and not ask the question. It seems obvious that loads of people around the GTTF knew that felonious activity was going on - at least. So how deep does it go? It's a necessary question. If it's deep then getting rid of the mayor isn't going to do it. Nor is getting rid of the GTTF. And even if Brandon Scott is as clean as we'd like him to be we need to know what he is up against.
For a moment it seems like the book is going to get into the BPD as a whole, or maybe even Mosby's office. But we never get there.
Seems like Jenkins didn't create himself. And that his mistake wasn't breaking the law it was breaking the laws of the BPD.
For a moment it seems like the book is going to get into the BPD as a whole, or maybe even Mosby's office. But we never get there.
Seems like Jenkins didn't create himself. And that his mistake wasn't breaking the law it was breaking the laws of the BPD.
November 13, 2020
Really fascinating stuff, so poorly written it's barely readable. People mentioned offhand chapters ago will suddenly reappear mid-paragraph mentioned only by last name, hardly any effort is made to differentiate some of them, and it's structured erratically, from the narrative choice to paragraph placement. Not sure if this saw an editor.
August 2, 2020
True crime reporting about the GTFF team in Baltimore right after Freddie gray’s murder. Ends in mid 2018. Absorbing and upsetting
October 6, 2020
Season 6 of The Wire might just be the best yet. Honestly, the story of the Baltimore Gun Trace Task Force is pretty wild. Also nice to see defence lawyers getting credit as the real heroes for once.
January 5, 2023
The explosive true story of America's most corrupt police unit, the Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF), which terrorized the city of Baltimore for half a decade.
When Baltimore police sergeant Wayne Jenkins said he had a monster, he meant he had found a big-time drug dealer—one that he wanted to rob. This is the story of Jenkins and the Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF), a super group of dirty detectives who exploited some of America’s greatest problems: guns, drugs, toxic masculinity, and hypersegregation.
In the upside-down world of the GTTF, cops were robbers and drug dealers were the perfect victims, because no one believed them. When the federal government finally arrested the GTTF for robbery and racketeering in 2017, the stories of victims began to come out, revealing a vast criminal enterprise operating within the Baltimore Police Department.
Cops planted heroin to cover up a fatal crash that resulted from a botched robbery. They stole hundreds of thousands of dollars, faked video evidence, and forged a letter trying to break up the marriage of one of their victims to keep his wife from paying a lawyer. And a homicide detective was killed the day before he was scheduled to testify against the crooked cops.
When Baltimore police sergeant Wayne Jenkins said he had a monster, he meant he had found a big-time drug dealer—one that he wanted to rob. This is the story of Jenkins and the Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF), a super group of dirty detectives who exploited some of America’s greatest problems: guns, drugs, toxic masculinity, and hypersegregation.
In the upside-down world of the GTTF, cops were robbers and drug dealers were the perfect victims, because no one believed them. When the federal government finally arrested the GTTF for robbery and racketeering in 2017, the stories of victims began to come out, revealing a vast criminal enterprise operating within the Baltimore Police Department.
Cops planted heroin to cover up a fatal crash that resulted from a botched robbery. They stole hundreds of thousands of dollars, faked video evidence, and forged a letter trying to break up the marriage of one of their victims to keep his wife from paying a lawyer. And a homicide detective was killed the day before he was scheduled to testify against the crooked cops.
July 16, 2023
This book was good for the subject matter but had a ton of spelling errors which made it hard to enjoy. It also would have been better if there was more shown about how this effected the overall Baltimore Police Department, making it the most corrupt department. I completely agree that this squad is corrupt, I am just not sure if it is the MOST especially when compared to NYC and LA.
December 2, 2020
Fantastic read. Very eye-opening.
July 16, 2021
I followed the trial of the gun trace task force as it unfolded and was still in disbelief as I read this book. The story is incredible and sells itself, but I wonder if a person who is not familiar with the GTTF would be able to keep track of all of the players. Each offense committed by these corrupt cops is well-documented in the book, and while it is odd to say because each story is true, at times it got monotonous reading about each scheme. I would give the book a 4 because it is well-researched, but a 3 because I lost interest in the book at times, which should not happen given the unbelievable conduct that is documented.
July 30, 2020
Was glad to read this book and get a glimpse inside. I had only vaguely remembered this story from the news.Though it is super disturbing that this type of activity goes on. I did have to refer to the list of characters at times to keep all the names straight. Also, I was surprised to learn there were notes in the back of the book. I suppose that since this is an ARC, The notations were not yet marked within the reading material so it was not easy to find the corresponding notes in the notes section. But again, glad to have had the chance to read it!
September 22, 2020
Insane.
There aren’t really words for how I felt reading this. To know that there were so many people involved and potentially complicit in these crimes makes me sick. It reads like a movie where you hope the whole time the good guy is going to win. My only complaint is wishing there were photos in the beginning of the book instead of the end... with so many moving parts I had trundle keeping the characters straight. Totally recommend, especially for those local to baltimore!
There aren’t really words for how I felt reading this. To know that there were so many people involved and potentially complicit in these crimes makes me sick. It reads like a movie where you hope the whole time the good guy is going to win. My only complaint is wishing there were photos in the beginning of the book instead of the end... with so many moving parts I had trundle keeping the characters straight. Totally recommend, especially for those local to baltimore!
July 29, 2020
There’s so much about this book I could say. It was a fantastic read. A master class in literary journalism. Deeply reported and beautifully written. Though it has two authors, it wasn’t possible to tell who had written what — the two had a shared voice and story. A book so good that I wanted to devour it, but that I dreaded reading because I didn’t want it to end.
July 24, 2020
The story itself is crazy and this is a good read but a lot of the time the descriptions get so florid the book reads more like a pitch for a Netflix series, which, if that happened I would guess a good editor would cut out the majority of the stuff about Ivan Bates..
September 17, 2020
Sad story with few surprises- poorly paid police squads responsible for dealing with drug-rich cash rich drug dealers will arrest the dealers while simultaneously stealing their stash and cash. I found its repetitive nature a bit tedious. Life The Wire gone crazy.
December 13, 2020
Shocking facts but very dry to read.
December 13, 2020
Fascinating story ruined by the overuse of recorded conversations not edited to remove the irrelevant bits of dialog.
August 22, 2020
In the spring of 2015, I was finishing my first year of teaching at a public school in South Baltimore when Freddie Gray was killed in police custody and the city erupted in anger. I remember how optimistic my coworkers and students were when State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby brought charges against the police officers involved and how disappointed we felt when Gray's family didn't see justice in criminal court for his death. Anyone from over-policed neighborhoods throughout Baltimore could have confirmed that police presence in the city had been problematic for decades if you asked them.
Whenever a police scandal is covered in the media, sympathizers keep offering this canned response that the police officers accused were "just bad apples" but based on the evidence in this book and various other investigative sources, this is simply not true. Wayne Jenkins and his accomplices on the Gun Trace Task Force took advantage of their power as officers of the law, knowing that there was very little oversight from the public and their superiors. The facts in this book are disturbing but if anyone had been listening to the decades of complaints from the citizens of Baltimore, they absolutely shouldn't be surprising.
In the aftermath of the George Floyd anti-police brutality protests throughout the US, this book couldn't have come at a better time. Cities across the US (including my hometown of Philadelphia) have proposed referendums that aim to address police corruption and brutality in this country. I hope that this book convinces readers that modern policing is, and always has been, highly problematic and that the problem doesn't just lie with a few bad apples but with the entire goddamn orchard.
Whenever a police scandal is covered in the media, sympathizers keep offering this canned response that the police officers accused were "just bad apples" but based on the evidence in this book and various other investigative sources, this is simply not true. Wayne Jenkins and his accomplices on the Gun Trace Task Force took advantage of their power as officers of the law, knowing that there was very little oversight from the public and their superiors. The facts in this book are disturbing but if anyone had been listening to the decades of complaints from the citizens of Baltimore, they absolutely shouldn't be surprising.
In the aftermath of the George Floyd anti-police brutality protests throughout the US, this book couldn't have come at a better time. Cities across the US (including my hometown of Philadelphia) have proposed referendums that aim to address police corruption and brutality in this country. I hope that this book convinces readers that modern policing is, and always has been, highly problematic and that the problem doesn't just lie with a few bad apples but with the entire goddamn orchard.
June 20, 2022
This should have been a much better book given the story it covers but the book was a mish-mash of names and events which was difficult to follow and really pretty unnecessary. It was mostly dialog based and I hate that in a nonfiction book. It’s so often contrived and not accurate in my mind. It just did not flow well at all.
The crimes and corruption of The Gun Trace Task Force in the Baltimore Police Department was recently fictionalized in a TV series called We Own This City, starring my man Jon Bernthal! That series was not as all-inclusive as this book but it made it easier to follow the book which pretty much told the same story but in a less compelling way. There was more on the State’s Attorney’s Office and the problems that arose between the prosecutors and defense attorneys who were torn between allegiance to the citizens of Baltimore and the police. There was also a lot about Ivan Bates, the defense attorney who had it out for Jenkins and went on to run for State’s Attorney in 2018, only to lose. But I was really hoping for more about the FBI’s investigation and how they eventually took down Wayne Jenkins and crew. Maybe there isn’t a lot available on that front to the public but it sure would have made the book more interesting. The FBI interviews shown in the tv show were some of the most compelling parts of the show. Overall I wouldn’t recommend this book if you are interested in this case as I’ve heard there are better ones out there.
The crimes and corruption of The Gun Trace Task Force in the Baltimore Police Department was recently fictionalized in a TV series called We Own This City, starring my man Jon Bernthal! That series was not as all-inclusive as this book but it made it easier to follow the book which pretty much told the same story but in a less compelling way. There was more on the State’s Attorney’s Office and the problems that arose between the prosecutors and defense attorneys who were torn between allegiance to the citizens of Baltimore and the police. There was also a lot about Ivan Bates, the defense attorney who had it out for Jenkins and went on to run for State’s Attorney in 2018, only to lose. But I was really hoping for more about the FBI’s investigation and how they eventually took down Wayne Jenkins and crew. Maybe there isn’t a lot available on that front to the public but it sure would have made the book more interesting. The FBI interviews shown in the tv show were some of the most compelling parts of the show. Overall I wouldn’t recommend this book if you are interested in this case as I’ve heard there are better ones out there.
June 9, 2024
Trigger warning: racism, police brutality, gang violence, drugs (all on page)
Okay first of all I want to say ACAB.
I consider myself a pretty strong anti police person but the level of corruption astounded me. The actions of the officers themselves were one thing. But the way the entire system colluded to keep their process going was fucking awful. Everyone from police commanders and commissioners to judges to states attorneys. It’s awful.
If I have one criticism of the book, it’s that there were a lot of names thrown around quickly and a lot of cutting back and forth between one storyline and the next so I really struggled to follow. I wish the authors had provided notes sometimes when referencing a person they briefly mentioned before or taken more effort to condense stories together (so everything that happened to x person is outlined at once).
It was also very interesting to look at the way race played into all this, which was not discussed a lot in the book. The authors are both white men. I am wondering how the Black officers felt (although not all the officers were Black) and towards the end felt weird about rooting for the white prosecutors over the black officers from the community. Particularly interesting was Gondo and his relationship to Wells. I wonder if growing up in Baltimore and around the streets affected their perception. I know there’s not really a way to explore that more.
Overall ACAB.
Okay first of all I want to say ACAB.
I consider myself a pretty strong anti police person but the level of corruption astounded me. The actions of the officers themselves were one thing. But the way the entire system colluded to keep their process going was fucking awful. Everyone from police commanders and commissioners to judges to states attorneys. It’s awful.
If I have one criticism of the book, it’s that there were a lot of names thrown around quickly and a lot of cutting back and forth between one storyline and the next so I really struggled to follow. I wish the authors had provided notes sometimes when referencing a person they briefly mentioned before or taken more effort to condense stories together (so everything that happened to x person is outlined at once).
It was also very interesting to look at the way race played into all this, which was not discussed a lot in the book. The authors are both white men. I am wondering how the Black officers felt (although not all the officers were Black) and towards the end felt weird about rooting for the white prosecutors over the black officers from the community. Particularly interesting was Gondo and his relationship to Wells. I wonder if growing up in Baltimore and around the streets affected their perception. I know there’s not really a way to explore that more.
Overall ACAB.
December 16, 2025
I thought the story itself was amazing to learn about, the writing at points were a bit over the top. I remember a part where the author is describing one of the main culprits and it felt like a 5th grader narrating out the obvious bad guy in his short story. The actions that those men partook in speak volumes to what type of people they are, I don’t need a description of them that is ridiculous in vilifying them. Also the victims from the GTTF were not all spewing rainbows and sunshine as the author depicts, with some of them being involved in nefarious activities themselves but there parts being glossed over. Overall I think it’s a decent book if you can get over the authors descriptions because the actual story is very compelling and intriguing.
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