Barksdale Organization

In the television series The Wire, the main batch of characters stem from one of the competing fictional drug rings being investigated by the Major Crimes Unit of the Baltimore Police Department. The show starts season one by planting a wire on the crew led by members of the Barksdale family and their closest friends. The Barksdale crew was currently being led by Avon Barksdale starting in the first season and is portrayed as notoriously the most powerful and violent drug crew currently in Baltimore, Maryland. The crew is held responsible for multiple homicides including key witnesses in cases against their members, money laundering and other illegal activities based mostly in the city projects in addition to their ongoing drug trafficking. The Barksdale Crew had been established for some time before Avon was responsible for leading it, but the show starts in the midst of a court proceeding against his nephew D'Angelo, during which a key witness reverses her testimony (after being bribed by Avon), resulting in the case against him being lost. Avon Barksdale, Stringer Bell and Wee-Bey lead in killing off all the other major Westside drug crews during their bloody battle for claim over the Franklin Terrace Towers low income housing projects where many of the corner boys of the crew live and sell their product. By the end of 1999 they were the sole uncontested drug organization doing business within The Towers. The Police Department as a whole is portrayed as corrupt and filled with close ties to the streets so progress in investigation is often leaked and/or adapted to quickly by the entire network.

Ultimately, after a prolonged investigation by the Major Crimes Unit, a bloody turf war with a new emerging kingpin called the Marlo Stanfield's crew and the culmination of a long revenge campaign by a more independent force on the streets, Omar Little, the complex ring eventually collapses in the summer of 2004 at the end of season three, with most of its main members incarcerated or dead.