The Wire is a series broadcast by HBO between 2002 and 2008. It all takes place in the city of Baltimore, an independent city of the State of Maryland. Its creator is David Simon, who was for years a journalist in the black chronicle of the newspaper The Sun.
The series focuses on the slums of Baltimore, where drugs and crime coexist. But not only that, but everything that surrounds them: the social situation of many people in the neighborhood, the police action, the internal fights between the drug trafficking gangs, etc. The Wire offers us a broad vision of all the agents that operate this world: from the small consumer to the top political spheres.
The world of The Wire Several shots are heard against the morning; heartbreaking shrieks that cut through the air, some heads poking through the window and then ... nothing. Only silence. Each one to his routine and his chores. The residents of this marginal neighborhood of Baltimore are already used to the waves of violence that shake the streets where they walk daily. The drug is installed in each corner; young people who start working for the different distribution bands since they are very young since their environment is the only possibility that offers them.
The Police
The police work every day against organized gangs, highlighting the futility of their procedures and without the possibility of evolving and improving their resources and resources, as they stumble face to face with a hierarchical, static system; a system based on the "chain of command" above all and whose only concern is to reach the limit statistics that are imposed from above. This limits in logistic terms the different police operations, making them many times ineffective and having to deal with an older problem: the surprise factor.
"Nobody wins. One side only loses more slowly. "
-Prezvalousky-
The crime corresponds to a feedback between the police itself and the offender. The first can not act if the first does not create the means through which to commit crimes and the latter will create new ways of evading the security forces when the former narrow the circle around them.
Thus, the reality that is tried to demonstrate is that it is practically impossible to anticipate the crime. It is the criminals themselves who create it and the police must act according to their evolution.
Politics and contraband
On the other hand, we find political rivalries. The struggle for power justifies all the means through which this is sought: bribes, misappropriation of public funds, etc. Instruments that feed the inertia of a vicious circle that marks the passage of the rest of the situations.
The limitations imposed "from above" are a barrier to ending organized crime and drug trafficking, showing that on many occasions high political spheres are accomplices because they benefit, directly or indirectly, from this world of crime. However, the series reflects another phenomenon: politicians, while they are nourished by the money of criminal gangs, prevent them from entering their circle, clearly marking the position in which they find each other.
"The King remains the King."
-D'Angelo-
Likewise, The Wire tries to focus its attention on the suppliers of the drug, the smugglers who move it from its exit to its final destination. The port of Baltimore is the main point of traffic. The demands of unions to politicians are not heard, so in many cases they must resort to theft and illegal activities in order to get an incentive that motivates the public powers to listen to what they have to say.
"Business, always business ..."
-The Greek-
The school
Education is another of the great institutions that foments the delinquency around the drug. The standardization of courses and classes promotes truancy, treating young people as numbers that must complete the legally required rates so that the school can continue to function. In this way, the only concern is that the children attend class the first day for the record to be counted.
Likewise, the concern lies in the need to keep the courses stable and balanced, passing the course students without having acquired the required skills, since the fact of making them repeat the course implies a destructuring and an investment of funds and time that the system is not willing to take over.
The media
It is presented to the press, especially the written one, as a confabulating medium. Newspapers need to constantly feed on information to stay afloat. In this way, they inflate their own news to awaken interest in society and thus continue to generate sales. In this way, the crime itself and the orientation of the policy itself is manipulated by spurious information media whose only interest is to remain relevant.
"A lie is not part of the story. It's just a lie. "
-Terry Hanning-
The Wire tells us about the influence of the system and its inability to evolve. It is created not to leave it. In the end, everything is reduced to a circle of violence and power in which the smallest, given their social circumstances, must adapt to a hostile world.
An ecosystem that they face with few resources and that pushes them directly into a world of violence and destruction. It was the elders, before them, who became what they are, and it is they who will occupy that place in the future. It will be the very system that created them that makes them succumb to the violence of their own activities.
"Just a gangster, I guess."
-Avon Barksdale
