Baltimore Police Department - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

• The BPD was portrayed in the NBC television series Homicide: Life on the Street produced by David Simon. The show ran for seven seasons and spawned a TV movie titled Homicide: The Movie. The series was based on the book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets. At times, there has also been crossover in stories and characters from Law & Order and Homicide: Life on the Street.
• The HBO original series The Wire (also produced and created by David Simon) features the department extensively, portraying it as a dysfunctional organization whose effectiveness is often impaired by personal vendettas and office politics.
• Of Dolls and Murder, a documentary film, follows members of the Baltimore Homicide Department as they try and solve cold cases. It also looks at The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, a series of tiny crime scene dioramas that the Baltimore police famously use for training in forensics. These training dioramas provided inspiration for The Miniature Killer, a recurring character in the television series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.
• The TV series Rescue 911, which aired 1989-1996, often showed a Baltimore police car in the introduction to many stories.
• In NCIS, Anthony DiNozzo (played by actor Michael Weatherly) is a former Baltimore detective. DiNozzo is shown to carry the M1911 as his duty side arm.