Wayne Jenkins, The Corrupt Cop Behind Baltimore’s Gun Trace Task Force And ‘We Own This City’
Baltimore Police DepartmentOnce highly lauded officers the Baltimore Police Department, Wayne Jenkins (center) and his Gun Trace Task Force unit were caught by the FBI robbing and extorting citizens.
Wayne Jenkins had been a superstar cop. By 2015, he was a Baltimore Police Department favorite. In 2016, he was appointed as the leader of the Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF). He and his team were lauded as some of the best cops in Baltimore.
As reported by the BBC, a supervisor once claimed they demonstrated “a work ethic that is beyond reproach.” Every month, the team seized dozens of illegal firearms — especially important given that Baltimore was going through a turbulent time.
Although the homicide rate had been on the rise in the city since 2011, Men’s Health reported that following the death of Freddie Gray — a 25-year-old who died in the back of a police van in 2015 — the city saw a much sharper increase in shooting deaths.
The police force became frustratingly cautious, overly reserved about making stops or arrests, or even outright turning a blind eye to crime. Jenkins’ team, then, seemed to be a beacon of light.
So on March 1, 2017, Jenkins and his task force entered the Baltimore PD’s Internal Affairs building expecting to deal with a minor complaint regarding a damaged vehicle. Instead, they were greeted by an FBI SWAT team who quickly put all seven men in handcuffs.
The FBI, it turned out, had been surveilling Jenkins’ unit for months. And They’d gathered a mountain of evidence that the officers had been robbing citizens, filing for hundreds of overtime hours they never worked, stealing drugs, and selling illegal firearms on the streets.
Five of them, including Jenkins, pleaded guilty. The other two claimed they were innocent and went to trial, where the full extent of their crimes was made public.
Numerous victims took the stand in January 2018, including drug dealers and former officers like detective Maurice Ward, who shed light on the tactics that had been encouraged by Jenkins — tactics like carrying BB guns in their patrol cars “in case we accidentally hit somebody or got into a shootout, so we could plant them,” according to The Baltimore Sun.
The trial also revealed that Jenkins often took drugs off suspects without submitting them to evidence. He had openly spoken about invading the homes of high-level dealers, whom he called “monsters,” hoping to find massive quantities of drugs and cash.
A bail bondsman named Donald Stepp confessed that he’d sold drugs given to him by Jenkins totaling about $1 million.
The Gun Trace Task Force “was a front for a criminal enterprise,” Stepp said. “I’m here because of greed. It’s that simple.”
HBOThe HBO series ‘We Own This City’ stars Jon Bernthal (far right) as Wayne Jenkins.
The trial was televised, and the events leading up to it have also been turned into the HBO series We Own This City, created by The Wire creator David Simon and starring Jon Bernthal as Jenkins.
Jenkins didn’t testify at the trial, but after all seven former officers were found guilty, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison. He didn’t speak about it or respond to interview requests until September 2021.
Speaking with the BBC, Jenkins implicated several former supervisors who knew of his team’s illegal activities, including one who’d coached him into stealing the first time.
Their names were not made public because none were officially charged, and the Baltimore Police Department declined to respond. But Jenkins did offer more insight into what his time in the department was like.
“This is a saying we state: ‘Don’t let probable cause stand in the way of a good arrest,'” he said. “If you’ve got to lie about what you’ve seen or what you heard or what you witnessed, as long as he’s dirty, he’s got the drugs and he’s got the guns and he did the crime — just get him.”
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