In 2015, Officers David McDougall and Gordon Hawk of the Harford County Narcotics Task Force trace a series of heroin overdoses to Baltimore street dealer Aaron Anderson and his supplier Antonio Shropshire. Corrupt officers Momodu Gondo and Jemell Rayam of the Baltimore Police Department's Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF) forcefully clean out Anderson's apartment prior to MacDougall and Hawk's own raid on the residence; Hawk discovers the other team's GPS tracker underneath Anderson's vehicle. Office of Civil Rights attorney Nicole Steele arrives in Baltimore to help issue a consent decree on the BPD, whose performance is dwindling in the wake of the protests following the killing of Freddie Gray. She sees the extent of the department's corruption exemplified in Officer Daniel Hersl, who remains on the force due to only one of the 46 complaints against him being sustained. In 2017, FBI agent Erika Jensen and BPD officer John Sieracki interview Gondo as part of an anti-corruption probe, while Sergeant Wayne Jenkins, the GTTF's ringleader, is arrested by Internal Affairs.
In 2003, on his first day of field training, Jenkins is taught to aggressively clear individuals off the streets–including making false arrests–in order to reduce the murder rate and thereby help local officials win re-election. In 2015, McDougall and Officer Scott Kilpatrick uncover Gondo's personal connection to Shropshire via a series of phone calls between the two. In 2016, homicide detective Sean Suiter, Jenkins' former colleague striving to perform honest police work, investigates the murder of a working-class family man. Steele meets a young cop who was demoted for speaking out against the BPD's corruption; he explains that the city's prioritization of mass arrests has made it nearly impossible to find unbiased juries without links to law enforcement. Steele later meets Hersl, who denies having committed any wrongdoing. In 2017, Rayam brazenly recounts stealing cash seized during GTTF raids to Jensen and Sieracki.
From 2004 to 2006, Jenkins becomes increasingly brutal in his police work, viciously beating one suspect and later ransacking a car wash in a fit of rage during a raid. Suiter, who joined Jenkins on the latter raid, uncovers weapons and cash at the scene; Jenkins later offers $50,000 of stolen cash to an ambivalent Suiter. In the face of mounting complaints against him, Hersl is transferred to the GTTF, where he will be placed under less scrutiny. In 2016, BPD Commissioner Davis admits to Steele his distaste for Hersl but cites pushback from the police union as a major obstacle to reform. Suiter identifies and arrests the perpetrator in his homicide investigation, with the help of another honest officer, Jaquan Dixon. Jensen and Sieracki begin assembling their case against the GTTF after seeing officers steal from suspects in broad daylight. In 2017, Jensen and Sieracki interview GTTF supervisor Tom Allers, who is shaken upon learning that Davon Robinson, a man from whom Allers stole $10,000 during a raid, was murdered by his suppliers to whom he owed the money.
In 2010, Jenkins unlawfully initiates a high-speed chase with a suspect that ends in a car crash that kills an innocent driver. To justify the chase and avoid being penalized, he plants drugs in the suspect's vehicle and has Suiter "discover" them. From 2015 onward, Jenkins continues to plant evidence and steal money from numerous drug busts, robs a stripper while off duty and re-sells oxycontin stolen by looters. Jenkins distributes stolen money among his unit but keeps the majority to himself. Amid the Freddie Gray protests, he explains to his unit that high arrest counts will yield greater overtime payments, allowing them to make large fortunes while acting with impunity. In 2016, Suiter observes prosecutors struggling to find jurors willing to trust police testimony in the wake of the Gray protests. In 2017, GTTF officer Maurice Ward recounts Jenkins' various thefts to Jensen and Sieracki.
In 2016, Steele interviews a man whom Hersl robbed and falsely charged with assaulting a police officer, costing the victim his job. She later meets with Brian Grabler, a police academy instructor and retired detective who ascribes much of the present-day corruption to the War on Drugs. Steele and Davis receive pushback on the consent decree from Baltimore mayor Catherine Pugh, who refuses to cut funding from social programs to finance the initiative and instead forces Davis to rely on budget cuts to his already dwindling department. In 2017, Gondo and Rayam implicate each other regarding their participation in the GTTF's corruption under Jenkins. Suiter is visibly shaken watching the news of the FBI's arrest of seven GTTF officers, recalling his own complicity in Jenkins' crimes.
In 2017, Steele quits her job, having grown disillusioned upon realizing the futility of police reform efforts under the Trump Administration. Jenkins protests his innocence to Jensen and Sieracki, despite nearly all of his subordinates on the GTTF attesting to his crimes. Suiter learns he must testify before a grand jury regarding his time in the GTTF and realizes that he will either go to jail or lose his job in disgrace. While investigating a crime scene, Suiter dies from a gunshot wound; the police rule his death a homicide, though an independent investigation concludes he likely killed himself. Jenkins ultimately accepts a plea deal, with Suiter's death allowing him to evade blame for planting drugs on the scene of the 2010 car crash. He is sentenced to 25 years in federal prison. A postscript notes that crime in Baltimore has skyrocketed since the death of Freddie Gray and the unsuccessful prosecution of the officers involved.
In May 2021, it was confirmed that Reinaldo Marcus Green would direct the series.[11] Production was reported to begin in July 2021 with filming occurring in Baltimore.[12] Production was temporarily halted for a week in September 2021 due to a "COVID-19 event".[13]
The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 93% approval rating with an average rating of 8.3/10, based on 56 critic reviews. The website's critics consensus reads, "A spiritual successor to The Wire with an even more pessimistic outlook on law enforcement, We Own This City deftly explores compromised individuals to paint an overall picture of systemic corruption."[17]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 83 out of 100 based on 27 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[18]
