Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets (1991)

Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets is a 1991 non-fiction book written by Baltimore Sun reporter David Simon describing a year spent with detectives from the Baltimore Police Department Homicide Unit. The book received the 1992 Edgar Award in the Best Fact Crime category.

The book was subsequently fictionalized as the NBC television drama Homicide: Life on the Street (1993–99), on which Simon served as a writer and producer. Many of the key detectives and incidents portrayed in the book provided inspiration for the first two seasons of the show, with other elements surfacing in later seasons as well. It later also provided inspiration for Simon's HBO television series The Wire (2002–08).

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 persuaded the Baltimore Police Department to allow him access to the city's Homicide Unit for calendar year 1988, and throughout that year he shadowed a shift of detectives as they investigated cases, conducted interrogations, executed search and arrest warrants, and testified at trials. Baltimore recorded 234 murders during the year Simon spent with the Homicide Unit.

A total of 567 murders occurred in the city in 1989 and 1990 together, the period during which Simon wrote Homicide. The book was published in 1991, during which Baltimore saw a record 353 murders. Simon said he was particularly interested in the demythification of the American detective. Although detectives are typically portrayed as noble characters who care deeply about their victims, Simon believed real detectives regarded violence as a normal aspect of their jobs.

Content

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 mix of quirky, absurd, and sometimes tragic cases they investigated.

Latonya Wallace

The case of Latonya Kim Wallace, an 11-year-old girl who was sexually assaulted and murdered, is perhaps the most notable case in the book. Tom Pellegrini was the primary detective on the case, which remains unsolved. The Adena Watson case in Homicide: Life on the Street was based on this case, and the travails on it of new Detective Tim Bayliss were based on Pellegrini's experiences. Simon described it as "the spine of the book".

Geraldine Parrish

A woman named Geraldine Parrish took out life insurance policies on multiple relatives, including her five husbands and a niece, then arranged for their murders so she could collect the benefits. She eventually pleaded guilty to four murders and was convicted of three assaults, receiving eight life sentences without parole.

Donald Waltemeyer was the primary on this case, which played a large role in his transition from the mindset of patrol officer to that of investigator. His experiences involved two attempts to locate and exhume a Parrish victim, both of which ended with the wrong man being disinterred. The case of Calpurnia Church in the first season of Homicide: Life on the Street was based on Parrish's crimes.

Gene Cassidy

Gene Cassidy, a patrolman and close friend of Detective Sergeant Terry McLarney, was shot twice in the head at point-blank range in October 1987. Although initially expected to die or be left completely disabled, Cassidy made a full mental recovery but was left blind and without his sense of smell or taste. Drug dealer Clifton "Butchie" Frazier was eventually convicted of attempted murder in the first degree and sentenced to life in prison plus 20 years. McLarney felt a great deal of disillusionment by the way that the BPD seemed unable to understand or fully help Cassidy in the aftermath of the shooting.

The Cassidy story was worked into the first season of Homicide: Life on the Street and was the largest storyline for the character of Detective Steve Crosetti (Jon Polito). Officer Chris Thormann (Lee Tergesen), a friend of Crosetti, was shot and blinded while on duty; Crosetti took the incident personally and went to great lengths to find the shooter. The case also inspired the character of Blind Butchie on The Wire, a blind Baltimore drug dealer who was soft-spoken and not vicious (a contrast to the real-life Butchie Frazier).

The jury's actions became the basis for a Season 4 storyline in which Bruce Campbell played a cop whose father, a retired officer, was strangled to death by a suspect who was acquitted by an uninterested jury. A passage in Simon's book revealed that the guilty verdict against Frazier came about because two jurors who were convinced of his guilt argued more strenuously to bring the jury to their side than did two who believed he was innocent, while the other eight had no strong opinion either way.

Gary Tuggle, an officer seconded to the homicide unit to help with the investigation, went on to serve in the Drug Enforcement Administration. He returned to Baltimore in March 2018 to take the post of Deputy Police Commissioner, then was appointed Interim Commissioner two months later and served until March 2019.

Butchie Frazier was not presented as being related to Robert Frazier, a drug dealer who was tried and convicted of a different murder detailed in the book.

John Randolph Scott

Car thief John Randolph Scott was fatally shot in the back while fleeing on foot from officers. Only one pursuing officer fired his weapon, and the bullet was found embedded in the dirt of a nearby vacant lot. With no clear murder weapon and no cooperation from the other officers on the scene, Detective Donald Worden was unable to close the case, making it the only unsolved police-related shooting in department history. The book notes that several officers, including a primary suspect, were reassigned to administrative positions.