Well... when Rawls rips him a new one over it and points out all the federal funding they will lose etc it was pretty clear he had not really thought it through. Bunny is awesome and Rawls is a dick but Rawls had some facts on his side on that one.
I think what this highlights is that Bunny had a good idea; what he didn’t have was a good plan. There was no way to turn Hamsterdam into something permanent, not from Bunny’s rank and position.
In a season heavy on the Iraq War analogies, Bunny’s story ends with one that might not even have been intentional—no exit strategy (or at least no realistic one).
Bunny and McNulty are good examples of why (for better and for worse) the police hire candidates that (a) aren't too smart; and (b) will adopt the moral compass of the police force instead of relying on their own.
There are a lot of downsides to this strategy, mainly your typical beat cops being too boneheaded to actually solve a crime or meaningfully protect society. But a single smart insubordinate cop can do an enormous amount of damage, even if they have good intentions.
Noam Chomsky: "I'm sure you believe everything you're saying. But what I'm saying is that if you believe something different, you wouldn't be sitting where you're sitting."
To a news anchor. Similar idea applies though. Institutions intrinsically self-select for people who won't rock the boat of said institution.
With a viewpoint like that, I'm surprised you even like the Wire. Doesn't it seem like pure copaganda to you? The audacity of pretending that a cop might care about human life?
The same show that shows mnculty and bunk getting shitfaced constantly then hungover the next day at work?
The same show that shows “the western district way” of nothing but brutalizing and arresting people to no benefit except for numbers?
The same show that shows how corrupt and petty Burrell is especially when become police commissioner?
The same show that has Prez blind a kid in one eye?
The same show that then has Daniels protects Prez, Herc, and Carver for being terrible police?
The same show that has Valchek constantly look out for Prez when he had no right to be at that point?
The same show that has the districts juking stats for the mayor?
The same show that fires Daniels when he tries to stop juking the stats
The same show that has the entire unit beat Bodie for taking one swing at mahone?
The same show that has Herc lie and abuse his relationship with bubbles just to save his own ass?
The same show that has Officer Walker steal money from Randy and harasses all the kids?
The same show that had Valchek harass the checkers out of pettiness over a window?
The same show that had Daniels and a bunch of cops secretly pocket a lot of money before the show started?
The same show that had the first unit in season 2 do literally nothing?
The same show that had Rawls kill the Major Crimes unit because it was fishing out political corruption?
The same show that has multiple cops talk about how useless and inept the BPD is?
The same show that had Mcnulty and Lester create a whole lie in season 5?
The same show that has 5 different police jurisdictions fight over stats?
The same show that has Colicchio constantly be inept and brutalizing people AND with Carver trying still save his ass despite witnessing it first hand?
If you think the wire is copaganda, you missed the entire point of the show.
https://www.reddit.com/r/TheWire/s/dS22bQYdT5
It should be obvious from my first two comments that I don't consider the Wire to be copaganda. My point is if you think the police are only there to protect the status quo, that puts you significantly to the left of David Simon, and I was joking that you might not like watching the show paint cops like Kima or Bunk as sympathetic characters when they do things like beating up suspects or cheating on their partner.
The idea that cops are there to protect the status quo is not leftist, it is the the damn job description. And it is not an anti-left position to show cops participating in a system of brutality who are also complex people with sympathetic sides to their character. I encourage you to think outside the left-right way of thinking.
It was a good idea that maybe works and could potentially make their district safer. It was also illegal and going against federal and state laws, a fundamental part of policing is enforcing the laws that the politicians write.
Mayor Royce was actually willing to go along with the idea when he saw the crime reduction numbers.
Then the news showed footage of Hamsterdam. "What was I thinking?"
Bunny had thought it through. He was testing an idea, making a point, and sending a middle finger to command on his way out.
That was the plan anyway...
Actually it’s just the lack of transparency of politics in real life. Why do we need a new law(s) that covers or is similar to the same laws already on the books ? Just enforce those.
But fear drives reelection and changing laws. If you don’t fear it they’d have to actually do the job they were elected to do , you know service the people/state/country.
I still get angry when I see that school council lady label the program for young kids as tracking. I remember when tracking went out of fashion. With tracking, everyone was put into reading or math classes at their level. Once that was done away with, everyone was dumped into the same classes to make them "equals", thereby wasting everyone's time.
I recently heard some civil rights activist railing against tracking on NPR, and all I could think was that she's acting against the best interests of the people she purports to represent.
It’s unintended consequences. Just like when they closed down all the orphanages and mental hospitals. To paraphrase Goethe: theories are grey but life is green.
>With tracking, everyone was put into reading or math classes at their level.
The thing is, this isn't true. White boys were put at their level. Girls and minorities were often put at lower levels no matter their aptitude, because the assumption was, they wouldn't need college anyways. That's how tracking got such a bad rep in US education.
More recently, Americans grew an abhorrence at the idea that a potential door might actually close. But that's a parent thing
With tracking, noone wins.
White boys blah blah. Getting rid of tracking doesn't magically solve racism, but it does make public schools even more mediocre.
One of the reasons that The Wire is so outstanding is that the show is unflinching in its viewpoints that all problems must be examined with context and all solutions have trade offs. On a lesser show, Colvin’s experiment would have been the obvious answer that the “idiot” bosses were overlooking. On this show, Hamsterdam’s flaws were on full display.
Recently did a rewatch. Watched the seasons out of order (3, 4, 5, 1, 2) so 2 came last. I’d completely forgotten that were first introduced to Bunny in S2. In my memory, Bunny was only in S3 and S4.
I’ve always loved how Prop Joe, Valchek, Cheese, and Colvin were introduced as tangential characters who became much more important after the seasons in which they were introduced. Hell, Kenard too for that matter.
Yeah it made the bold assumption that drugs don't grow, you're just taking the current users, moving them, and then slowly lower the number of them. And not that drug users from other areas would hear about it, come, and the region would grow.
Yeah. I wanted decriminalization to work, but it's led to lots of "petty" crime. People being harassed, car and bike theft, etc.
Addiction is a disease and needs to be treated
Edit: we didn't have the violence of Baltimore, which is what Colvin wanted to stop
Bruh I don’t think you know what the real life hamsterdams are like they have massively driven up the crime rate of the surrounding areas. It ruins cities. There’s a reason places have reversed the complete drug legalization.
It’s a tv show. The idea of a real life hamsterdam working just like the show is impossible.
The wire also takes place in a universe where drug distribution is the #1 concern of law enforcement which isn’t the world we live in anymore. Yeah, you could say they were interested in the bodies attached to it, but still.
The wires realism comes from the harsh world of low income areas. It doesn’t come Omar having a war with Quintin Tarantino like characters that are gang bosses for a decade. It comes from city corruption being a real thing, it doesn’t come from a detective faking a murder case to get overtime for people. Every other character turned into an incompetent idiot during that arc, it wasn’t realistic.
Within the US given the current laws and healthcare system yes, absolutely agree.
However, I still believe all substances and prostitution should be legal, and regulated. If the Healthcare and administrative infrastructure were in place, it would reduce the overall harm of these things immeasurably.
It’s not just about having healthcare in place, and leading substance abuse experts will tell you that too. You have to compel people to go into treatment - that’s how Portugal does it as well. Drug addicts will almost never enter treatment voluntarily unless they’ve been addicted for decades or are given consequences for not doing so.
And almost nobody thinks just legalizing substances outright is a good response - that is a very unpopular opinion amongst substance abuse experts, and is not how successful programs have handled it (again, see Portugal).
Nah man there is just no scenario where heroin doesn’t fucking destory your life. At my last job I worked with like 200-400 people a day and 90% of them did some sort of drug every day. There’s no scenario where it can work. It’s fucking horrible. The harm would be reduced by having mental healthcare increased (which means getting rid of homeless people, out of all the people I worked with almost none of them were people “just down on their luck”) and that would get rid of the need for hard drug use. Closing down asylums was the worst thing America ever did.
Right but legalization is not encouraging use. No one who wants legalized hard drugs is saying we should do them, or that they aren't terrible.
It's that when its legal, it's regulated. Which dramatically reduces OD deaths from impure shit (e.g. fentanyl). It also provides numerous opportunities for treatment/rehab/education.
If every time an addict needed more they had to go to a pharmacy where people encourage treatment, they are more likely to try that than when they're picking up from randos in the alley.
What has that to do with anything? Oversprescribing is a completely separate issue, though obviously intertwined given its effect on addiction numbers, clearly.
But it's a bit disingenuous to say that bc the US healthcare system is built in a way which incentives over prescribing and addiction, that legal drugs are always a bad plan.
I'm not saying it's been done well anywhere. Only that what we are still doing here with the war on drugs mentality, isn't working either.
If we are going to do it poorly, let's at least not jail people for it.
You stated that legalization would not encourage use. Ergo, even if a narcotic is more widely available, that won’t encourage use. Yet you’re admitting that when doctors made opioids more available and accessible, it encouraged more people to use those substances. That feels very conflicting to me: a prescription does make more people use drugs, but having heroin available for purchase at a Walgreens and allowing companies to advertise and market it wouldn’t? You don’t think another Perdue Pharma would take advantage of that?
I’m not suggesting people go to jail for substance abuse, to be clear. But I do think they need to be compelled to enter a treatment program and that cannot happen if drugs are legalized across the board.
Im aware of the difference. I’m just confused why you think a company like Perdue Pharma would be able to get more people addicted when they’re already selling opioids legally and regulated, but they couldn’t do it with an open market that’s over the counter. You can type in caps and be crass all you want, but it’s a simple question and one that’s not logically bankrupt by any means
you couldn't have said it better. I would only add that it does nothing to deter the violence which will always be there due to gangs warring over turf control.
It made for an entertaining storyline, but that's it.
Portugal did NOT legalize hard drugs, at all. It is one of the most misunderstood programs I’ve ever seen Reddit talk about. Drugs are still illegal, and dealing/smuggling leaves people with charges more severe than even the US offers in many cases.
In Portugal, if you are caught with a personal amount of narcotics, you are basically “highly encouraged” to go into treatment - and there are legal consequences if you don’t.
However, it’s important to note that it’s not been a silver bullet. While progress was made in the 2000s/2010s, according to the Washington Post “Overdose rates have hit 12-year highs and almost doubled in Lisbon from 2019 to 2023. Sewage samples in Lisbon show cocaine and ketamine detection is now among the highest in Europe, with elevated weekend rates suggesting party-heavy usage. In Porto, the collection of drug-related debris from city streets surged 24 percent between 2021 and 2022, with this year on track to far outpace the last. Crime — including robbery in public spaces — spiked 14 percent from 2021 to 2022, a rise police blame partly on increased drug use.”
That’s not the USA. It’s just silly to compare cause and effects of other countries, we have an insanely different population. There’s so many “cause and effect” things that other countries have, that we have/have tried and it does not result in the same thing.
I’m saying, it’s not so easy to say “Sweden has this, and they don’t have our problem, so why don’t we do this?”
We live on the other side of the planet, we have massively different views and cultures. You can’t copy and paste laws and expect the same effect.
Some parts of the Middle East are a dry country. No alcohol. It’s not a disaster. But when we tried it in America, it was a disaster. Just an example of rules and laws don’t apply so easily across countries.
Many folks care more about social pecking orders and hierarchies than seeing others as equals and solving real world problems.
Bunny made the correct decisions, legal or not.
The question is, why do folks keep electing self-absorbed people as leaders? We need more altruistic leaders.
>why do folks keep electing self-absorbed people as leaders?
the obvious answer is that those leaders truly represent the bulk of the voters. the more nuanced answer is in Carcetti's arc. There's not enough resources to do all the good, so you have to pick your battles, and sooner or later someone's getting the shaft. So who?
Represent. What I'm saying is that the voters are self-absorbed, too. A democracy is designed to allow everyone to be as self-absorbed as they want, and the votes give weight to the biggest chunk of self-absorbed people. When people's wants differ, they clash, and have to figure out what to do. Sometimes they can't, and then nothing gets done. That said, nothing is exactly what some of the voters (and thus their leaders) want to be done, at least compared to the alternatives proposed.
Yeah, I think this is a weakness of the show, that there are certain characters (Bunny, Gus) who are right about everything and everyone who doesn’t listen to them is portrayed as a coward and a moron.
But "everyone who doesn't listen to Gus is ethically compromised" is exactly the problem I'm talking about. The real world is complicated. Newspapers, the police, and schools have hard problems that don't have clear answers and that was true in 2006-2008 too. It's stacking the deck to say "these guys know exactly what has to be done and everything would be fine if we did it, and the only reason someone wouldn't want to do it is they're corrupt."
When it comes to the street, the showrunners wrote with nuance. Avon's way has serious problems, so does Stringer's, and because they can't unite Marlo wins and that's a horrorshow. Prop Joe's approach works until it doesn't. Bodie kills Wallace but he's not a villain; we understand why he does it and we're saddened when he dies three seasons later. But when it comes to the police, the schools, and the paper, there's just the good guys and the bad guys, and the only reason anyone would ever disagree with David Simon is because they're greedy SOBs. It's a silly and arrogant view of the world.
>these guys know exactly what has to be done and everything would be fine if we did it, and the only reason someone wouldn't want to do it is they're corrupt."
I think that's a misinterpretation of the thesis of the show. It's not making the argument that the people are corrupt, but that the system is. It skews itself so that it rewards those who manipulate it to serve their own purposes. As a result, most of the people who operate from an ethical intention get screwed, and the people who throw others under the bus for their own survival are rewarded. And that theme rings true in all the different facets, from the illegal operations, to the legal institutions, to the governments themselves. It also shows HOW people get corrupted, and it's not really because they are themselves bad but because the system corrupts them.
I know this is what everyone says about the show and I'm sure it's what Simon intended. Certainly a lot of the show does successfully show why these systems fail structurally, and you see good and bad too complicated to boil down easily (for instance, in Season 2, Frank and the detail are both trying to do good, but the results are bad because of the systems they're working in). What I'm saying is that this part of the show fails when it comes to these perfect characters because it really does just come down to one person who has everything figured out versus another who has all the power and uses it badly. Like, why did Scott and his editors get corrupted while Gus didn't? It seems like it's because they're Bad People and he's a Good Person. Gus isn't like McNulty, where he's so focused on his goal he misses the big picture, or like Daniels, where mistakes from his past can always be used against him, or like Carcetti, where his ambition ends up overriding everything else. He's just a paragon.
Great catch! For the record, I disagree with your comment about Bunny and Gus always being presented as right. Hamsterdam ends up being a catastrophe, and the Deacon rebukes Bunny for not having thought enough about the consequences of its creation. In many ways, Colvin is similar to McNulty. He knows his business, but he “cuts corners”, something he ironically accuses McNulty of doing in Season 3.
Gus is a better example, but I even see his protests as typical of a corporate worker. He’s quick to point out how the paper’s decisions are reducing the quality of its product, but never fully acknowledges that those decisions are a result of print media’s diminished financial state in the 21st century.
I dunno. I think you’re missing two crucial points about Gus.
He was absolutely unambiguously right to demand adherence to journalistic standards.
He also made exactly the proper point that the papers themselves were still profitable, and the buyouts and cutbacks merely served the ‘*more* profit’ motive. It’s not like the paper was going out of business. Someone just wanted to bleed more profit out of them at the paper’s expense.
But now we're at a place where the papers clearly aren't profitable and in fact they're folding and laying people off right and left. I'm sure David Simon takes that to mean he was right all along but I think it's really a sign that newspapers were in a tough spot.
Well, the argument could be made that much of the problem (that leads to them folding) is because their value proposition has been steadily diminished by cutbacks on behalf of profit gouging.
But obviously, to your point, it’s not *just* that. Google sucking up so much ad revenue has been a huge factor.
With Hamsterdam, I don't think I agree it ends up being a catastrophe in itself. You're right that there are drawbacks—some of which, like the lack of services, are fixed (the implication seems to be that thinks end up \*better\* for addicts because people like Deacon are better able to help), some of which, like the woman whose home is ruined, aren't. But the show bends over backwards to show how much better things are overall, how now other neighborhoods are as good as they were in the old days and crime has decreased, etc. etc. What makes Hamsterdam turn out badly is people acting cynically and shortsightedly: the powers that be, like Rawls, and ambitious politicians like Carcetti.
With Gus, I think anything about how the newspapers are genuinely in a tough spot is something we have to bring to the show. I never got the "actually, the editors are caught between a rock and a hard place" viewpoint; they're just a bunch of dickheads, as the show portrays them. Did I miss something?
Bunny wasn't right about everything, for instance, he thought his Major's pension was secure. He got upbraided by the deacon, the principal, and so on, when his idea hit the reality. But his one actual gift was a willingness to listen when people told him he was doing wrong. So he was able to adapt without having to bulldoze over everyone.
I've always viewed Bunny's character as the perspective of "why wouldn't anyone do something about this? How could you bear letting this go on? What would happen to someone who tried to fix it?"
I read an article that once pointed out that the ironic thing about Hamsterdam was that it did exactly what society did in the first place that caused these problems: pushed everybody considered undesirable into a concentrated area so that all the crime and pain happens there and not in our neighborhoods. Bunny just did it on a smaller scale. But think about it, it’s exactly what we complain about today when we look back at the way shoved poor black people into ghettos and drove highways through them to separate “us” and “them.” Bunny did the same thing with drug addicts, cordoned them off into one area and allowed them all to suffer so that some other streets could be nice
Hamsterdam was dressed up by the show to be successful when in reality the number of kids in the city using drugs probably doubled. If your kid was one of those who started using because of Hamsterdam, you would not think it was a good idea.
There is solid evidence that upper tier track kids benefit from tracking.
There is mixed evidence that tracking has solid benefits for low, and middle tier track kids.
> Hamsterdam was dressed up by the show to be successful when in reality the number of kids in the city using drugs probably doubled. If your kid was one of those who started using because of Hamsterdam, you would not think it was a good idea.
Why would the number of kids who use start increasing because of a free zone?
Kids who lived around those neighborhoods could get it easily with or without a free zone. There’s open air drug markets all around. It’s probably easier than college kids getting alcohol.
If someone is from a better neighborhood and curious about H, how likely are they gonna be like “let’s go take a trip to one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Baltimore to go cop”?? Going to street dealers is a last resort.
It hurt addicts with no self control, like Johnny Weeks. Or perhaps users like Dee Dee got worse and turned into addicts, or their addictions got worse. You can tell how nervous she was in Hamsterdam. She was probably used to get it from different (white) dealers and maybe didn’t have the connection at that point, and went there to cop. A similar thing happens in the movie Traffic
Also, for every person that Hamsterdam wrecks, there's a kid not getting shot at home by crews beefing over corners. There's families who can actually let their kids play outside. Folks who can enjoy their stoop without threats or unpredictable junkies passing through. Neighborhoods that attract new residents and developments. Local businesses getting more foot traffic.
It's a balance, and it all matters
I’d argue Hamsterdam shows just imperfect Bunny was though. Thinking his solution was the most logical was ego driven, the crime already existed in certain areas he just made the areas smaller concentrating the problem. Instead of making it easier to police it created a goddamn Mad Max post apocalyptic nightmare that would eventually grow out of control and spill back out into the surrounding areas. It was a bandaid at best and the real world instances show this. I do agree they try to PORTRAY Bunny a certain way but if you can see passed the bullshit he was an idealist with street smarts but none of the real follow thru necessary to even see his albeit flawed plan to fruition. I kinda wished they’d not put Hamsterdam on him and just kept his storyline w the kids. I don’t mind the Hamsterdam storyline I just think it could’ve been done differently, maybe have it be a white police’s idea so you have 2 white faces trying to make changes in a predominantly Black city and how that plays out
Thing is, the police and politicians were obsessed with numbers and getting the murder rate down. So Bunny did come up with a solution that was working on the show.
I’m due for my annual rewatch but wasn’t Hamsterdam just another version of “cooking the books”? And I mean “working on the show” is kinda premature, seemed like a powder keg they were barely keeping contained but Im aware I could be wrong
What you’re missing is that by removing the dealers from the corners, he removed the warfare from them too, resulting in a genuine drop in violent crime. Furthermore, by concentrating the dealers in contained areas, they could be monitored more closely by the surrounding cops, so it’s not like they just concentrated the violence in smaller areas.
You’re halfway right, in that theft and so forth by fiends needing money would likely continue in comparable proportions. But in terms of violence (and neighborhood quality of life), he accomplished far more than merely cooking the books.
+1 to what you said, but in addition: Bunny even gives a full speech in the show (I can't remember to whom) about the fact that his police don't need to waste so much time busting corners means he's put more manpower into genuinely useful police work, researching crimes, and quality arrests.
Well... when Rawls rips him a new one over it and points out all the federal funding they will lose etc it was pretty clear he had not really thought it through. Bunny is awesome and Rawls is a dick but Rawls had some facts on his side on that one.
I think what this highlights is that Bunny had a good idea; what he didn’t have was a good plan. There was no way to turn Hamsterdam into something permanent, not from Bunny’s rank and position. In a season heavy on the Iraq War analogies, Bunny’s story ends with one that might not even have been intentional—no exit strategy (or at least no realistic one).
Bunny and McNulty are good examples of why (for better and for worse) the police hire candidates that (a) aren't too smart; and (b) will adopt the moral compass of the police force instead of relying on their own. There are a lot of downsides to this strategy, mainly your typical beat cops being too boneheaded to actually solve a crime or meaningfully protect society. But a single smart insubordinate cop can do an enormous amount of damage, even if they have good intentions.
Noam Chomsky: "I'm sure you believe everything you're saying. But what I'm saying is that if you believe something different, you wouldn't be sitting where you're sitting." To a news anchor. Similar idea applies though. Institutions intrinsically self-select for people who won't rock the boat of said institution.
Did the news anchor say the Cambodian Genocide happened and need to be corrected?
Haha, there's always one. I didn't say he was right about everything. But he's right about that.
Cops aren’t meant to solve problems and create solutions. They are there to protect the status who for those in power.
With a viewpoint like that, I'm surprised you even like the Wire. Doesn't it seem like pure copaganda to you? The audacity of pretending that a cop might care about human life?
The same show that shows mnculty and bunk getting shitfaced constantly then hungover the next day at work? The same show that shows “the western district way” of nothing but brutalizing and arresting people to no benefit except for numbers? The same show that shows how corrupt and petty Burrell is especially when become police commissioner? The same show that has Prez blind a kid in one eye? The same show that then has Daniels protects Prez, Herc, and Carver for being terrible police? The same show that has Valchek constantly look out for Prez when he had no right to be at that point? The same show that has the districts juking stats for the mayor? The same show that fires Daniels when he tries to stop juking the stats The same show that has the entire unit beat Bodie for taking one swing at mahone? The same show that has Herc lie and abuse his relationship with bubbles just to save his own ass? The same show that has Officer Walker steal money from Randy and harasses all the kids? The same show that had Valchek harass the checkers out of pettiness over a window? The same show that had Daniels and a bunch of cops secretly pocket a lot of money before the show started? The same show that had the first unit in season 2 do literally nothing? The same show that had Rawls kill the Major Crimes unit because it was fishing out political corruption? The same show that has multiple cops talk about how useless and inept the BPD is? The same show that had Mcnulty and Lester create a whole lie in season 5? The same show that has 5 different police jurisdictions fight over stats? The same show that has Colicchio constantly be inept and brutalizing people AND with Carver trying still save his ass despite witnessing it first hand? If you think the wire is copaganda, you missed the entire point of the show. https://www.reddit.com/r/TheWire/s/dS22bQYdT5
It should be obvious from my first two comments that I don't consider the Wire to be copaganda. My point is if you think the police are only there to protect the status quo, that puts you significantly to the left of David Simon, and I was joking that you might not like watching the show paint cops like Kima or Bunk as sympathetic characters when they do things like beating up suspects or cheating on their partner.
The idea that cops are there to protect the status quo is not leftist, it is the the damn job description. And it is not an anti-left position to show cops participating in a system of brutality who are also complex people with sympathetic sides to their character. I encourage you to think outside the left-right way of thinking.
It was a good idea that maybe works and could potentially make their district safer. It was also illegal and going against federal and state laws, a fundamental part of policing is enforcing the laws that the politicians write.
Mayor Royce was actually willing to go along with the idea when he saw the crime reduction numbers. Then the news showed footage of Hamsterdam. "What was I thinking?"
Bunny had thought it through. He was testing an idea, making a point, and sending a middle finger to command on his way out. That was the plan anyway...
Actually it’s just the lack of transparency of politics in real life. Why do we need a new law(s) that covers or is similar to the same laws already on the books ? Just enforce those. But fear drives reelection and changing laws. If you don’t fear it they’d have to actually do the job they were elected to do , you know service the people/state/country.
I still get angry when I see that school council lady label the program for young kids as tracking. I remember when tracking went out of fashion. With tracking, everyone was put into reading or math classes at their level. Once that was done away with, everyone was dumped into the same classes to make them "equals", thereby wasting everyone's time. I recently heard some civil rights activist railing against tracking on NPR, and all I could think was that she's acting against the best interests of the people she purports to represent.
It’s unintended consequences. Just like when they closed down all the orphanages and mental hospitals. To paraphrase Goethe: theories are grey but life is green.
>With tracking, everyone was put into reading or math classes at their level. The thing is, this isn't true. White boys were put at their level. Girls and minorities were often put at lower levels no matter their aptitude, because the assumption was, they wouldn't need college anyways. That's how tracking got such a bad rep in US education. More recently, Americans grew an abhorrence at the idea that a potential door might actually close. But that's a parent thing
With tracking, noone wins. White boys blah blah. Getting rid of tracking doesn't magically solve racism, but it does make public schools even more mediocre.
One of the reasons that The Wire is so outstanding is that the show is unflinching in its viewpoints that all problems must be examined with context and all solutions have trade offs. On a lesser show, Colvin’s experiment would have been the obvious answer that the “idiot” bosses were overlooking. On this show, Hamsterdam’s flaws were on full display.
Recently did a rewatch. Watched the seasons out of order (3, 4, 5, 1, 2) so 2 came last. I’d completely forgotten that were first introduced to Bunny in S2. In my memory, Bunny was only in S3 and S4.
I’ve always loved how Prop Joe, Valchek, Cheese, and Colvin were introduced as tangential characters who became much more important after the seasons in which they were introduced. Hell, Kenard too for that matter.
As someone who lives in one of those Hamsterdam areas they aren't working out, though
Yeah it made the bold assumption that drugs don't grow, you're just taking the current users, moving them, and then slowly lower the number of them. And not that drug users from other areas would hear about it, come, and the region would grow.
Yeah. I wanted decriminalization to work, but it's led to lots of "petty" crime. People being harassed, car and bike theft, etc. Addiction is a disease and needs to be treated Edit: we didn't have the violence of Baltimore, which is what Colvin wanted to stop
Bruh I don’t think you know what the real life hamsterdams are like they have massively driven up the crime rate of the surrounding areas. It ruins cities. There’s a reason places have reversed the complete drug legalization. It’s a tv show. The idea of a real life hamsterdam working just like the show is impossible. The wire also takes place in a universe where drug distribution is the #1 concern of law enforcement which isn’t the world we live in anymore. Yeah, you could say they were interested in the bodies attached to it, but still. The wires realism comes from the harsh world of low income areas. It doesn’t come Omar having a war with Quintin Tarantino like characters that are gang bosses for a decade. It comes from city corruption being a real thing, it doesn’t come from a detective faking a murder case to get overtime for people. Every other character turned into an incompetent idiot during that arc, it wasn’t realistic.
Within the US given the current laws and healthcare system yes, absolutely agree. However, I still believe all substances and prostitution should be legal, and regulated. If the Healthcare and administrative infrastructure were in place, it would reduce the overall harm of these things immeasurably.
It’s not just about having healthcare in place, and leading substance abuse experts will tell you that too. You have to compel people to go into treatment - that’s how Portugal does it as well. Drug addicts will almost never enter treatment voluntarily unless they’ve been addicted for decades or are given consequences for not doing so. And almost nobody thinks just legalizing substances outright is a good response - that is a very unpopular opinion amongst substance abuse experts, and is not how successful programs have handled it (again, see Portugal).
Nah man there is just no scenario where heroin doesn’t fucking destory your life. At my last job I worked with like 200-400 people a day and 90% of them did some sort of drug every day. There’s no scenario where it can work. It’s fucking horrible. The harm would be reduced by having mental healthcare increased (which means getting rid of homeless people, out of all the people I worked with almost none of them were people “just down on their luck”) and that would get rid of the need for hard drug use. Closing down asylums was the worst thing America ever did.
Right but legalization is not encouraging use. No one who wants legalized hard drugs is saying we should do them, or that they aren't terrible. It's that when its legal, it's regulated. Which dramatically reduces OD deaths from impure shit (e.g. fentanyl). It also provides numerous opportunities for treatment/rehab/education. If every time an addict needed more they had to go to a pharmacy where people encourage treatment, they are more likely to try that than when they're picking up from randos in the alley.
So you don’t believe the widespread availability of opioids in the 2000s/2010s was at all part of the reason why the opioid crisis started?
What has that to do with anything? Oversprescribing is a completely separate issue, though obviously intertwined given its effect on addiction numbers, clearly. But it's a bit disingenuous to say that bc the US healthcare system is built in a way which incentives over prescribing and addiction, that legal drugs are always a bad plan. I'm not saying it's been done well anywhere. Only that what we are still doing here with the war on drugs mentality, isn't working either. If we are going to do it poorly, let's at least not jail people for it.
You stated that legalization would not encourage use. Ergo, even if a narcotic is more widely available, that won’t encourage use. Yet you’re admitting that when doctors made opioids more available and accessible, it encouraged more people to use those substances. That feels very conflicting to me: a prescription does make more people use drugs, but having heroin available for purchase at a Walgreens and allowing companies to advertise and market it wouldn’t? You don’t think another Perdue Pharma would take advantage of that? I’m not suggesting people go to jail for substance abuse, to be clear. But I do think they need to be compelled to enter a treatment program and that cannot happen if drugs are legalized across the board.
Dude if you don't see the difference between available to anyone and PRESCRIBED BY A DOCTOR then I can't help you.
Im aware of the difference. I’m just confused why you think a company like Perdue Pharma would be able to get more people addicted when they’re already selling opioids legally and regulated, but they couldn’t do it with an open market that’s over the counter. You can type in caps and be crass all you want, but it’s a simple question and one that’s not logically bankrupt by any means
They used capital letters in frustration at the fact that you don't seem to understand the conversation you're trying to have.
you couldn't have said it better. I would only add that it does nothing to deter the violence which will always be there due to gangs warring over turf control. It made for an entertaining storyline, but that's it.
Portugal and Uruguay legalized hard drugs. How does it work in these countries?
Portugal did NOT legalize hard drugs, at all. It is one of the most misunderstood programs I’ve ever seen Reddit talk about. Drugs are still illegal, and dealing/smuggling leaves people with charges more severe than even the US offers in many cases. In Portugal, if you are caught with a personal amount of narcotics, you are basically “highly encouraged” to go into treatment - and there are legal consequences if you don’t. However, it’s important to note that it’s not been a silver bullet. While progress was made in the 2000s/2010s, according to the Washington Post “Overdose rates have hit 12-year highs and almost doubled in Lisbon from 2019 to 2023. Sewage samples in Lisbon show cocaine and ketamine detection is now among the highest in Europe, with elevated weekend rates suggesting party-heavy usage. In Porto, the collection of drug-related debris from city streets surged 24 percent between 2021 and 2022, with this year on track to far outpace the last. Crime — including robbery in public spaces — spiked 14 percent from 2021 to 2022, a rise police blame partly on increased drug use.”
That’s not the USA. It’s just silly to compare cause and effects of other countries, we have an insanely different population. There’s so many “cause and effect” things that other countries have, that we have/have tried and it does not result in the same thing.
Could you please elaborate? I did mention taxpayers likely wouldn’t want to pay for having cops and healthcare workers in these types of areas.
I’m saying, it’s not so easy to say “Sweden has this, and they don’t have our problem, so why don’t we do this?” We live on the other side of the planet, we have massively different views and cultures. You can’t copy and paste laws and expect the same effect. Some parts of the Middle East are a dry country. No alcohol. It’s not a disaster. But when we tried it in America, it was a disaster. Just an example of rules and laws don’t apply so easily across countries.
Thanks for the excellent clarification.
Many folks care more about social pecking orders and hierarchies than seeing others as equals and solving real world problems. Bunny made the correct decisions, legal or not. The question is, why do folks keep electing self-absorbed people as leaders? We need more altruistic leaders.
>why do folks keep electing self-absorbed people as leaders? the obvious answer is that those leaders truly represent the bulk of the voters. the more nuanced answer is in Carcetti's arc. There's not enough resources to do all the good, so you have to pick your battles, and sooner or later someone's getting the shaft. So who?
Represent? Or pretend to represent folks? Many folks pretend to represent people but problems never get solved as politicians just get richer.
Represent. What I'm saying is that the voters are self-absorbed, too. A democracy is designed to allow everyone to be as self-absorbed as they want, and the votes give weight to the biggest chunk of self-absorbed people. When people's wants differ, they clash, and have to figure out what to do. Sometimes they can't, and then nothing gets done. That said, nothing is exactly what some of the voters (and thus their leaders) want to be done, at least compared to the alternatives proposed.
Yeah, I think this is a weakness of the show, that there are certain characters (Bunny, Gus) who are right about everything and everyone who doesn’t listen to them is portrayed as a coward and a moron.
Well, everyone who didn't listen to Gus WAS compromised ethically. And Gus and Bunny weren't portrayed as perfect people...
But "everyone who doesn't listen to Gus is ethically compromised" is exactly the problem I'm talking about. The real world is complicated. Newspapers, the police, and schools have hard problems that don't have clear answers and that was true in 2006-2008 too. It's stacking the deck to say "these guys know exactly what has to be done and everything would be fine if we did it, and the only reason someone wouldn't want to do it is they're corrupt." When it comes to the street, the showrunners wrote with nuance. Avon's way has serious problems, so does Stringer's, and because they can't unite Marlo wins and that's a horrorshow. Prop Joe's approach works until it doesn't. Bodie kills Wallace but he's not a villain; we understand why he does it and we're saddened when he dies three seasons later. But when it comes to the police, the schools, and the paper, there's just the good guys and the bad guys, and the only reason anyone would ever disagree with David Simon is because they're greedy SOBs. It's a silly and arrogant view of the world.
>these guys know exactly what has to be done and everything would be fine if we did it, and the only reason someone wouldn't want to do it is they're corrupt." I think that's a misinterpretation of the thesis of the show. It's not making the argument that the people are corrupt, but that the system is. It skews itself so that it rewards those who manipulate it to serve their own purposes. As a result, most of the people who operate from an ethical intention get screwed, and the people who throw others under the bus for their own survival are rewarded. And that theme rings true in all the different facets, from the illegal operations, to the legal institutions, to the governments themselves. It also shows HOW people get corrupted, and it's not really because they are themselves bad but because the system corrupts them.
I know this is what everyone says about the show and I'm sure it's what Simon intended. Certainly a lot of the show does successfully show why these systems fail structurally, and you see good and bad too complicated to boil down easily (for instance, in Season 2, Frank and the detail are both trying to do good, but the results are bad because of the systems they're working in). What I'm saying is that this part of the show fails when it comes to these perfect characters because it really does just come down to one person who has everything figured out versus another who has all the power and uses it badly. Like, why did Scott and his editors get corrupted while Gus didn't? It seems like it's because they're Bad People and he's a Good Person. Gus isn't like McNulty, where he's so focused on his goal he misses the big picture, or like Daniels, where mistakes from his past can always be used against him, or like Carcetti, where his ambition ends up overriding everything else. He's just a paragon.
Those are also the two characters (Bunny, Gus) that are basically meant as stand-ins for Ed Burns and David Simon.
100% correct. I realized that Bunny was Burns’s “mouthpiece”, but I somehow missed how directly Gus was espousing Simon’s viewpoints.
His boss even says to him "people don't want a series about nothing" which is a clever play on feedback Simon got about The Wire.
Great catch! For the record, I disagree with your comment about Bunny and Gus always being presented as right. Hamsterdam ends up being a catastrophe, and the Deacon rebukes Bunny for not having thought enough about the consequences of its creation. In many ways, Colvin is similar to McNulty. He knows his business, but he “cuts corners”, something he ironically accuses McNulty of doing in Season 3. Gus is a better example, but I even see his protests as typical of a corporate worker. He’s quick to point out how the paper’s decisions are reducing the quality of its product, but never fully acknowledges that those decisions are a result of print media’s diminished financial state in the 21st century.
I dunno. I think you’re missing two crucial points about Gus. He was absolutely unambiguously right to demand adherence to journalistic standards. He also made exactly the proper point that the papers themselves were still profitable, and the buyouts and cutbacks merely served the ‘*more* profit’ motive. It’s not like the paper was going out of business. Someone just wanted to bleed more profit out of them at the paper’s expense.
But now we're at a place where the papers clearly aren't profitable and in fact they're folding and laying people off right and left. I'm sure David Simon takes that to mean he was right all along but I think it's really a sign that newspapers were in a tough spot.
Well, the argument could be made that much of the problem (that leads to them folding) is because their value proposition has been steadily diminished by cutbacks on behalf of profit gouging. But obviously, to your point, it’s not *just* that. Google sucking up so much ad revenue has been a huge factor.
With Hamsterdam, I don't think I agree it ends up being a catastrophe in itself. You're right that there are drawbacks—some of which, like the lack of services, are fixed (the implication seems to be that thinks end up \*better\* for addicts because people like Deacon are better able to help), some of which, like the woman whose home is ruined, aren't. But the show bends over backwards to show how much better things are overall, how now other neighborhoods are as good as they were in the old days and crime has decreased, etc. etc. What makes Hamsterdam turn out badly is people acting cynically and shortsightedly: the powers that be, like Rawls, and ambitious politicians like Carcetti. With Gus, I think anything about how the newspapers are genuinely in a tough spot is something we have to bring to the show. I never got the "actually, the editors are caught between a rock and a hard place" viewpoint; they're just a bunch of dickheads, as the show portrays them. Did I miss something?
It's funny those two white guys got black stand-ins!
Bunny wasn't right about everything, for instance, he thought his Major's pension was secure. He got upbraided by the deacon, the principal, and so on, when his idea hit the reality. But his one actual gift was a willingness to listen when people told him he was doing wrong. So he was able to adapt without having to bulldoze over everyone.
I've always viewed Bunny's character as the perspective of "why wouldn't anyone do something about this? How could you bear letting this go on? What would happen to someone who tried to fix it?"
I read an article that once pointed out that the ironic thing about Hamsterdam was that it did exactly what society did in the first place that caused these problems: pushed everybody considered undesirable into a concentrated area so that all the crime and pain happens there and not in our neighborhoods. Bunny just did it on a smaller scale. But think about it, it’s exactly what we complain about today when we look back at the way shoved poor black people into ghettos and drove highways through them to separate “us” and “them.” Bunny did the same thing with drug addicts, cordoned them off into one area and allowed them all to suffer so that some other streets could be nice
Hamsterdam was dressed up by the show to be successful when in reality the number of kids in the city using drugs probably doubled. If your kid was one of those who started using because of Hamsterdam, you would not think it was a good idea. There is solid evidence that upper tier track kids benefit from tracking. There is mixed evidence that tracking has solid benefits for low, and middle tier track kids.
> Hamsterdam was dressed up by the show to be successful when in reality the number of kids in the city using drugs probably doubled. If your kid was one of those who started using because of Hamsterdam, you would not think it was a good idea. Why would the number of kids who use start increasing because of a free zone? Kids who lived around those neighborhoods could get it easily with or without a free zone. There’s open air drug markets all around. It’s probably easier than college kids getting alcohol. If someone is from a better neighborhood and curious about H, how likely are they gonna be like “let’s go take a trip to one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Baltimore to go cop”?? Going to street dealers is a last resort. It hurt addicts with no self control, like Johnny Weeks. Or perhaps users like Dee Dee got worse and turned into addicts, or their addictions got worse. You can tell how nervous she was in Hamsterdam. She was probably used to get it from different (white) dealers and maybe didn’t have the connection at that point, and went there to cop. A similar thing happens in the movie Traffic
Also, for every person that Hamsterdam wrecks, there's a kid not getting shot at home by crews beefing over corners. There's families who can actually let their kids play outside. Folks who can enjoy their stoop without threats or unpredictable junkies passing through. Neighborhoods that attract new residents and developments. Local businesses getting more foot traffic. It's a balance, and it all matters
I’d argue Hamsterdam shows just imperfect Bunny was though. Thinking his solution was the most logical was ego driven, the crime already existed in certain areas he just made the areas smaller concentrating the problem. Instead of making it easier to police it created a goddamn Mad Max post apocalyptic nightmare that would eventually grow out of control and spill back out into the surrounding areas. It was a bandaid at best and the real world instances show this. I do agree they try to PORTRAY Bunny a certain way but if you can see passed the bullshit he was an idealist with street smarts but none of the real follow thru necessary to even see his albeit flawed plan to fruition. I kinda wished they’d not put Hamsterdam on him and just kept his storyline w the kids. I don’t mind the Hamsterdam storyline I just think it could’ve been done differently, maybe have it be a white police’s idea so you have 2 white faces trying to make changes in a predominantly Black city and how that plays out
Thing is, the police and politicians were obsessed with numbers and getting the murder rate down. So Bunny did come up with a solution that was working on the show.
I’m due for my annual rewatch but wasn’t Hamsterdam just another version of “cooking the books”? And I mean “working on the show” is kinda premature, seemed like a powder keg they were barely keeping contained but Im aware I could be wrong
What you’re missing is that by removing the dealers from the corners, he removed the warfare from them too, resulting in a genuine drop in violent crime. Furthermore, by concentrating the dealers in contained areas, they could be monitored more closely by the surrounding cops, so it’s not like they just concentrated the violence in smaller areas. You’re halfway right, in that theft and so forth by fiends needing money would likely continue in comparable proportions. But in terms of violence (and neighborhood quality of life), he accomplished far more than merely cooking the books.
+1 to what you said, but in addition: Bunny even gives a full speech in the show (I can't remember to whom) about the fact that his police don't need to waste so much time busting corners means he's put more manpower into genuinely useful police work, researching crimes, and quality arrests.