When I think of how Jenkins is portrayed in this episode, I think of Henry Hill’s description of Jimmy Conway in GoodFellas: “What he really loved to do was steal. I mean, he actually enjoyed it.” In scene after scene, Jenkins makes out like a bandit. He robs drug dealers. He robs drug dealers twice, first by looting their car, then by going to their house and looting it, too. He robs a stripper, taking back the money he gave her and then some. He robs a couple of guys raiding a Rite Aid for oxycontin, then takes the drugs to his crooked bail bondsman friend to make money off the stuff he looted from the looters. He robs a dealer’s safe, then stages a video re-creation of the looting of the safe so that the missing money never goes in the public record. And in a sense, he robs all the other crooked cops in his circle by constantly keeping the lion’s share of each haul for himself. The dude just can’t help himself.
But it’s the larger community of Baltimore he’s really robbing blind. As he explains to his fellow cops, he can take an 8-to-4 shift, show up to work at 2pm, and still make enough overtime to nearly double his salary. Why? Because during the hours where he actually quote-unquote does his job, he’s constantly “hunting,” busting heads and making arrests and seizing drugs and guns and money. “As long as we produce, as long as we put those numbers up, they don’t give a shit about what we do,” he explains. “We literally can do whatever the fuck we want.” And then the kicker: “We own this city.”
I reviewed last night’s episode of We Own This City for Decider.
Tags: decider, reviews, TV, TV reviews, we own this city