It was created by a journalist and a cop, who both had long careers in Baltimore before working on the show. Not surprising how realistic it is. (Also a beautiful work of art beyond the realism.) If you find the show interesting, David Simon's book "Homicide" is a great read.
Criminals with competence still operate in big numbers today, but LE very rarely targets them. The soft targets are just so abundant and easy, and the LE incentive system does not reward choosing hard targets at all.
Doesn’t help that a big chunk of the competent criminals have fully or partially internationalized their operations which acts as a very strong shield against LE.
Indeed that was one of the tropes of The Wire: the "street rip" bust was preferred over real investigation work that they police wanted to do. However the street busts yielded immediate (misleading) metrics of action and public photo ops: patient investigative work didn't.
The politicians wanted the immediate appearance of effectiveness over real effectiveness, top police brass wanted to keep their jobs, and rank and file police got to do ineffective work that made little difference.
"According to political scientist Marie Gottschalk of the University of Pennsylvania, since the 1970s while the prison population of the United States was rapidly increasing as the U.S. was targeting mostly poor and working class people by harshly punishing street crimes, drug crimes and immigration offenses, there was a simultaneous mass deregulation and decriminalization of white collar and corporate crime "despite a tsunami of elite-level criminal activities by leading banks, accounting firms and major corporations." Sociologist Loïc Wacquant writes that during this time period neoliberalism has not shrunk government but instead set up a "centaur state" with little governmental oversight for those at the top and strict control of those at the bottom."
This is a very high level "class war" analysis by academics that suggests that the poor are being oppressed while the rich go free.
It's a nice morality tale, and I'm sure there are instances where it is absolutely true. But that it is true as a rule, or even that they are comparable levels of analysis (one are "white collar" crimes and the parallel would be "blue collar" crimes, no? But street crimes and immigration offenses aren't working mans crimes - these are "no collar" crimes: anyone can commit an immigration offense, even rich people. And street crimes are often drug driven.
This analysis by Gottschalk and Wacquant suggests a "conspiracy" tone within a class war context. I would want to know if they didn't have some class war bias in their analysis before I accept their analysis from authority without examination.
Digital forensics examiner here; it’s extremely accurate especially for the tech involved at the time. I think I spotted a very small handful of things it had to kick under a rug for the plot to work, which is unbelievably small for a show like that.
It’s easily the best LE show that exists, but not just because of its accuracy; it’s incredible in its pure honesty. Some of the cops are total worthless shit bags, worse than the best of the criminals easily. Allowing that overlap, one that exists in real life, injects a whole lot of nuance into the story that is basically nonexistent outside of the show. And allows characters to grow and improve. It takes writers with actual LE experience (which they had) and a lot of talent to write that kind of thing without totally blowing it.
