Who speaks for you? The inside story of the prosecutor who took down Baltimore's most crooked cops

On February 12, 2018, a jury foreperson read the guilty verdicts that ended a corruption saga, a stain on the reputation of the Baltimore Police Department. Members of the Gun Trace Task Force operated as a law unto themselves, abusing their authority and robbing drug dealers. As author and prosecutor Leo Wise relates, the case against the officers began in the fall of 2015. An investigation into a drug dealer turned up an illegal surveillance device, which led to rogue officers and revealed their involvement in a host of other offenses, including illegal searches and overtime fraud. Wise, a U.S. Attorney who mostly prosecuted white-collar crime (including Enron) and political corruption, was floored by the depth of the officers' crimes. Wise and his investigators' work would lead to the indictment of eight officers in 2017, with six opting to plead guilty, while two stood trial. His excellent book provides an insider's perspective into a case that has garnered headlines since the March 2017 arrests and a compelling education for readers without ever sounding pedantic.

Federal prosecutor Wise delivers a riveting inside account of the yearslong investigation he led to take down a corrupt Baltimore police unit. Wise's involvement began in 2015, when he was brought into a probe of two major heroin dealers. The inquiry took a turn when Wise and his colleagues learned that a tracking device had been placed on one of the dealers' cars by a detective from the Baltimore Police Department's gun task force. The detective had bought the device himself and failed to register it in the required database; those anomalies initiated an investigation that yielded, in 2017, the indictment of seven Baltimore officers on racketeering charges involving the commission of multiple armed robberies, including of drug dealers they ripped off for money and narcotics. Most ended up pleading guilty, and, in 2018, the remaining defendants were convicted at a jury trial. Wise expertly balances detail and accessibility, writing lucidly about the case's legal intricacies and the challenges of getting jurors to view cops as criminals. This is a treat for true crime fans. (Apr.)