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Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets
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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.
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 the same for the HBO television series, The Wire.
Contents
- 1 Background
- 2 The book
- 2.1 Notable cases
- 2.2 Editions
- 3 The detectives
- 3.1 The Wire
- 3.2 Where are they now?
- 4 The slang
- 5 External links
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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.
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.
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 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.)
Spoilers end here.
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)
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
The Wire
Several of the detectives on the show were the basis for characters on the Baltimore based HBO drama The Wire. Jay Landsman spurned a character of the same name in addition to portraying a character named Dennis Mello. Rick Requer was the basis for Detective Bunk Moreland. Gary D'Addario appears as a Judge on the show who assists Detective Moreland with various grand jury summons. Roger Nolan and Donald Worden are briefly mentioned as officers in the department on various episodes. 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 clearence and marking criteria.
Where are they now?
Lieutenant Gary D'Addario rose to the rank of Major commanding the Northeastern District of the
Baltimore Police Department. The 37yr veteran of the department was fired by new Commissioner
Kevin Clark in 2003 as part of Clark's unpopular turnover of veteran command staff.
Source: Baltimore Sun, July 16, 2003. 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 Judge on the
HBO drama
The Wire. (Source:
Gary D'Addario at the
Internet Movie Database.)
Sergeant Jay Landsman retired from the Baltimore Police Department and joined Baltimore County Police Department. Jay currently works as an actor playing Lieutenant Dennis Mello in HBO's The Wire. (Source: Jay Landsman at the Internet Movie Database.) The actor Delaney Williams plays a character called Sergeant Jay Landsman in the same show. (Source: Delaney Williams at the Internet Movie Database.) Landsman's son Jay Jr. also works as a county homicide detective working out of precinct 4 in Pikesville, Maryland.
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.
Detective Tom Pellegrini joined the UNMIK police in Kosovo in 2000. See "Former Baltimore officer battles homicide in Kosovo" for information on Tom's work in the Balkans. Tom is currently a private investigator with Sherwood Investigators based in Severn, Maryland.
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- deragatory term for whites, specifically those who had a criminal history, in reference to Billytown.
- Board, "The Board" - 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 - a slam dunk, an easily cleared case.
- Eye Fuck - to look at someone disrespectfully or in anger.
- "Polygraph-by-Copier" - a folk tale in police circles where detectives use a photocopier as a polygraph machine on a particularly dumb suspect.
- Red Ball - a high profile case that draws media and political attention.
- Squirrel - a criminal, a suspect, a rodent.
- "Stone Whodunit" - a difficult case.
- Toad - deragatory term for blacks, specifically those who 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 - a black youth.
- Yo-ette - a young black female.
