Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets
Author David Simon
Country United States
Language English
Genre(s) Crime
Publisher Houghton Mifflin
Publication date June 1991
Pages 599
ISBN ISBN 0-395-48829-X

Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets is a 1991 book written by Baltimore Sun reporter David Simon describing a year spent with detectives from the Baltimore Police Department homicide squad. The book received the 1992 Edgar Award in the Best Fact Crime category.[1]

The book was subsequently fictionalized as the television drama Homicide: Life on the Street, on which Simon served as a writer and producer. Many of the key detectives and incidents portrayed in the book were reworked into the first and second seasons of the show. It would also provide inspiration for the HBO television series, The Wire.

Contents

[edit] Background

David Simon, a reporter for The Baltimore Sun, spent four years on the police beat before taking a leave of absence to write this book. He had persuaded the Baltimore police department to allow him unlimited access to the city's homicide unit for a full year, and throughout that year he shadowed one shift of detectives as they traveled from interrogations to autopsies, from crime scenes to hospital emergency rooms. Baltimore recorded 234 murders during the year Simon spent with the homicide unit. During the two years he spent writing Homicide, an additional 567 murders occurred.

[edit] The book

Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets provides a sympathetic but unromantic portrait of crime fighting in a major American city at the height of the late 1980s crime epidemic. The book is notable for the detailed look it gives into the professional lives of police detectives and the sometimes quirky, sometimes absurd, and sometimes tragic cases they investigated.

[edit] Notable cases

  • The Angel of Reservoir Hill - The case of Latonya Kim Wallace, a young girl who was sexually assaulted and murdered, is perhaps the most notable case in the book. The primary detective on the case, which remains unsolved, was Tom Pellegrini. The Adena Watson case in Homicide: Life on the Street was based on this case.
  • The Black Widow - The case of Geraldine Parish, a woman who took out insurance policies on her husbands and relatives, and then arranged for them to be murdered. The Black Widow was convicted of three murders and received concurrent life sentences. The primary detective on the case was Donald Waltemeyer. The character of Calpurnia Church in Homicide: Life on the Street was based on Geraldine Parish.
  • The Shooting of Gene Cassidy - Cassidy, a patrolman in the Baltimore PD and close friend of detective Terry McLarney, was shot in the head at point blank range with a .22 handgun. Although initially expected to die of his injury, Cassidy was able to make a partial recovery, but was left blind and without his sense of smell or taste. A drug dealer named Butchie Frazier was eventually convicted of attempted murder in the first degree. This story was worked into the first season of Homicide: Life on the Street.
  • The Slaying of John Randolph Scott - A young car thief fleeing Baltimore PD officers was shot in the back, killing him. Of the officers in pursuit, only one had fired a round from his weapon - and this accidental shot was found embedded in the asphalt. With no clear murder weapon and facing silence from the uniforms on the scene, detective Donald Worden was not able to put this killing in the black. This story was worked into a Homicide: Life on the Street story where Det. Frank Pembleton investigated a police-involved shooting; unlike the real case, the fictional story ended with a police officer being arrested and charged with the shooting.

[edit] Editions

  • David Simon (1991). Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets. Houghton Mifflin.  ISBN 0-395-48829-X (Hardcover)
  • David Simon (1992). Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets. Ballantine Books.  ISBN 0-449-90808-9 (Paperback)
  • David Simon (1993). Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets. Ballantine Books.  ISBN 0-8041-0999-0 (Hardcover)
  • David Simon (2006). Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets. Henry Holt and Company (Owl Books).  ISBN 0-8050-8075-9 (Paperback)

[edit] The detectives

David Simon joined the Baltimore Police Department as a "police intern" in January 1988 and spent 12 months following the homicide detectives of Lieutenant Gary D'Addario's shift. This is a list of the detectives on D'Addario's squad:

  • Lieutenant Gary D'Addario - Shift Commander
    • Detective Sergeant Terrence McLarney - Shift Supervisor
      • Detective Donald Worden
      • Detective Rick James
      • Detective Edward Brown
      • Detective Donald Waltmeyer
      • Detective David John Brown
    • Detective Sergeant Roger Nolan - Shift Supervisor
      • Detective Harry Edgerton
      • Detective Richard Garvey
      • Detective Robert Bowman
      • Detective Donald Kincaid
      • Detective Robert McAllister
    • Detective Sergeant Jay Landsman - Shift Supervisor
      • Detective Tom Pellegrini
      • Detective Oscar "Rick" Requer
      • Detective Gary Dunnigan
      • Detective Richard Fahlteich
      • Detective Fred Ceruti

[edit] The Wire

Several of the detectives described in the book served as the basis for characters on the Baltimore-based HBO drama The Wire. Jay Landsman spawned a character of the same name in addition to portraying a character named Dennis Mello. Rick Requer was the basis for Detective Bunk Moreland in the series and in season five Roscoe Orman plays a veteran named Oscar "Rick" Requer . Gary D'Addario appears as a Prosecuting Attorney Gary DiPasquale on the show who assists Detective Moreland with various grand jury summonses. Roger Nolan and Donald Worden are briefly mentioned as officers in the department on various episodes and Worden makes a cameo appearance as himself in the fifth season. A 1970s contract killer named Dennis Wise is also briefly mentioned and Dennis "Cutty" Wise is a major character in the series. Additionally, several traits of various officers can be viewed amongst the characters on the show. A lot of similar slang is also used on the show such as the words "Dunker", "Redball", and "Stone Whodunit" to describe the various cases. The police department as shown on the show also has the same red/black case clearance and marking criteria. Finally, a number of small anecdotes that were not used in Homicide: Life on the Street worked their way into The Wire, most notably the tale of "Snot Boogie", a small-time thief who was shot down after a craps game, which was used in the pre-credits sequence of the series's first episode.

[edit] Where are they now?

  • Gary D'Addario

Lieutenant Gary D'Addario rose to the rank of Major commanding the Northeastern District of the Baltimore Police Department. The 37-year veteran of the department was forced to retire by new Commissioner Kevin Clark in 2004 as part of Clark's unpopular turnover of veteran command staff.[2] Dee had guest appearances as QRT Lieutenant Jasper in Homicide: Life on the Street, as a Desk Sergeant in HBO mini-series The Corner, and as a Grand Jury States Attorney on the HBO drama The Wire.[3]

  • Jay Landsman

Sergeant Jay Landsman retired from the Baltimore Police Department and joined the Baltimore County Police Department. Jay currently works as an actor playing Lieutenant Dennis Mello in HBO's The Wire.[4] The actor Delaney Williams plays a character called Sergeant Jay Landsman in the same show.[5] Landsman's son Jay Jr. also works as a county homicide detective working out of precinct 4 in Pikesville, Maryland.

  • Donald Waltmeyer

Detective Donald Waltmeyer retired from the Baltimore Police Department and joined Aberdeen Police Department. Don died of cancer in 2005. He was posthomously promoted to Detective Sergeant by the Aberdeen PD.

  • Tom Pellegrini

Detective Tom Pellegrini joined the UNMIK police in Kosovo in 2000.[6] Tom is currently a private investigator with Sherwood Investigators based in Severn, Maryland.

  • Terry McLarney

Sergeant Terry McLarney is still in the Baltimore Police Department currently ranked as a Lieutenant in the Homicide Unit.

[edit] The slang

The book details a number of slang terms used by homicide detectives.

  • Billytown - area of South Baltimore inhabited by "Billies" (Hill Billies), South Baltimore's "white-trash redneck" population.
  • Billygoat- derogatory term for whites, specifically those with roots in Appalachia, and their descendants.
  • Board, The - A dry erase board kept in the squad room. Every squad sergeant's name is listed in columns on the top. Below their names are the names of the cases which their detectives are investigating, and a letter indicating which detective is the "primary" on the case. Open cases are listed in red. Closed cases are listed in black. This allowed supervisors to get a quick assessment of how productive each detective/squad was and acted as motivation for detectives. Use of "The Board" was discontinued in 1998 due to public relations and morale concerns, but was restored in 2000 at the request of the detectives.
  • Citizen or Taxpayer - A 'real' murder victim, as opposed to a drug dealer or gang member murdered in the course of criminal activity.
  • Dunker - An easily cleared case (from the basketball term slam dunk).
  • Eyefuck - To look at someone disrespectfully or in anger.
  • Polygraph-by-Copier - A folk tale in police circles in which detectives use a photocopier as a faux-polygraph machine on a particularly dumb suspect; pages are loaded into the machine with "TRUE" or "LIE" on them and questions are asked to match them ("What is your name?" "What is your age?" "Did you kill Johnny?"). This was used in one episode of Homicide: Life on the Street, and also an episode of The Wire. A story from the book notes that several cops in Detroit were punished for using this technique during interrogations.
  • Red Ball - A high profile case that draws media and political attention; Red Ball cases are investigated by all detectives on a shift and take precedence over existing active cases. They can and often do make or break a detective's career.
  • Squirrel - A criminal, a suspect, a rodent.
  • Stone Whodunit - A difficult case.
  • Toad - A derogatory term for blacks, specifically those who have or had a criminal history.
  • Ten Seven - police radio code for "out of service", may be applied to a homicide victim.
  • Ten Seventy-Eight - police radio code for "minor accident with injury", used by McAllister to refer to "your basic blowjob-in-progress interrupted by police gunfire."
  • Yo - An insulting term for a black youth; often used as shorthand for black criminals along with "toad".
  • Yo-ette - A young black female. Unlike "yo", the term doesn't refer to the individuals as criminals.

[edit] External links

[edit] References

  1. ^ Edgar Award Archives. Mystery Writers of America. Retrieved on 2006-09-29.
  2. ^ Source: Baltimore Sun, July 16, 2003.
  3. ^ Gary D'Addario at the Internet Movie Database
  4. ^ Character profile - Lieutenant Dennis Mello. HBO (2004). Retrieved on 2006-07-22.
  5. ^ Character profile - Sergeant Jay Landsman. HBO (2004). Retrieved on 2006-07-22.
  6. ^ See "Former Baltimore officer battles homicide in Kosovo" for information on Tom's work in the Balkans.