The Slow Hustle — The Long Battle for Justice in America

The Slow Hustle -- that's what my friend, author D. Watkins, calls the long, arduous process of social change. D should know -- after surviving a youth of hard knocks on the streets of Baltimore, he's become a leading critic of the endemic corruption in that city's notoriously dirty police department. The Slow Hustle, featuring D. Watkins, is the title of a new HBO documentary, focusing on the suspicious 2017 shooting death of Baltimore police detective Sean Suiter.

Was Suiter shot by a fellow cop, Serpico style, on the eve of his testimony to the feds about police corruption? Or was he a suicide, knowing that the feds were closing in on him too? The Slow Hustle is not only a fascinating who-dunnit -- it's a dissection of the rotting criminal justice system in urban America. Baltimore might have its own unique problems, but as D makes clear, policing in America is deeply fucked up.

(Full disclosure and all that -- I proudly edited D's collection of essays , The Beast Side, and he writes a column for Salon, the publication I founded in 1995 but am no longer connected to.)

Here's the trailer.

D. Watkins in The Slow Hustle