Homicide Unit
The Homicide Unit of the Baltimore City Police Department is responsible for the investigation of all unexplained deaths that take place within Baltimore City. (They are also responsible for investigating all police-related shootings, and, because the homicide unit is generally regarded as containing the best detectives on the police force, they are often given high-profile cases which are not necessarily homicides.) A clearance rate of 50% or more for the year is aimed for and the Unit is amongst the most demanding in the Criminal Investigations Division. Sergeant Landsman's squad is typically the focus of the show, though there is at least one other squad (according to David Simon's book, there are typically three homicide squads in Baltimore, on rotating shifts). The unit is currently under the C.I.D. supervision of Colonel Cedric Daniels.
Like the real department described in David Simon's Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, the unit uses a red-black system of tracking cases where red is the color for an open/not cleared case and black is the color for a closed/cleared case. Additionally similar slang such as "dunkers" (easy cases), "whodunits" (difficult cases), and "redball" (media attention gaining cases) are used to describe the various cases. Victims who are not associated with the drug trade or other crime are often referred to as "taxpayers".
A running practical joke within the unit is to cut a sleeping detective's necktie with scissors and pin them to a notice board in the unit office. Detectives often fall asleep in the office (or on stakeout) because of the overtime demands and have at times worked double and triple shifts as they have dealt with multiple murders. This was used most prominently in the third season.
Read more about this topic: Police Of The Wire
Famous quotes containing the words homicide and/or unit:
“Life and language are alike sacred. Homicide and verbicide—that is, violent treatment of a word with fatal results to its legitimate meaning, which is its life—are alike forbidden.”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)
“During the Suffragette revolt of 1913 I ... [urged] that what was needed was not the vote, but a constitutional amendment enacting that all representative bodies shall consist of women and men in equal numbers, whether elected or nominated or coopted or registered or picked up in the street like a coroner’s jury. In the case of elected bodies the only way of effecting this is by the Coupled Vote. The representative unit must not be a man or a woman but a man and a woman.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)