I GOT A MONSTER

Two Baltimore journalists reveal the nearly unbelievable tales of widespread police corruption in a squad whose leader ran it “like a war machine.”

Woods and Soderberg meticulously reveal a group within the Baltimore Police Department that became a criminal enterprise all its own. Known as the Gun Trace Task Force, its mission revolved around confiscating illegal weapons and narcotics and arresting the perpetrators. The authors begin with the egregiously corrupt head of GTTF, Sgt. Wayne Jenkins, who operated with near immunity. “For years,” write the authors, “high-ranking allies covered for Jenkins, helping him escape scrutiny coming from what they considered minor infractions.” However, as they demonstrate, most of Jenkins’ infractions were hardly minor, and in 2017, he was “indicted on federal racketeering charges.” The members of GTTF revolved in and out according to who applied and who was approved by either Jenkins or his superiors. Though the authors focus primarily on Jenkins and the eight other GTTF members, they also weave in secondary characters (the cast of characters at the beginning is useful), including a former BPD officer who moved to the force in Philadelphia, drug dealers who served as “collaborators,” families who were robbed and or terrorized by GTTF members, federal prosecutors, a Baltimore prosecutor, and defense lawyers. Dozens of other characters populate the narrative, too, sometimes in circumstances that might cause readers to question their utility. A few of the major characters emerge as the heroes within this massive scandal. Foremost is Ivan Bates, a defense lawyer who represented some of the victims of GTTF and was determined to bring down Jenkins and his thugs. Though racial bias is not an overriding theme of the text, it is nonetheless always in the background. Eventually, justice was served, at least in the form of lengthy jail sentences, but certain wounds will never heal.

Few readers will close this page-turner doubting that the GTTF was anything but the most corrupt police group in the U.S.