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The Slow Hustle

Courtesy of HBO

 

Actress Sonja Sohn wowed fans as Baltimore detective Kima Greggs on the hit HBO drama series The Wire, but in recent years, the busy star has taken a step behind the camera using her artistic vision to bring two documentaries to life that detail some of Baltimore’s challenges with crime. 

In 2017, Sohn documented Charm City in the aftermath of the death of Freddie Gray in her riveting documentary Baltimore Rising. Chaos sparked throughout the city as people waited to hear the fate of the six officers involved with allegedly killing the 25-year-old while in custody. With tension between law enforcement and the community boiling to a tipping point, Baltimore Rising followed activists, gang affiliates, and community members who were struggling to bring reconciliation to the city when change seemed nearly impossible. 

Now, almost 4 years later, Sohn returns with her highly anticipated follow-up documentary The Slow Hustle, which chronicles the mysterious and unsolved death of police detective Sean Suiter, who was fatally shot in the head in 2017 while out on duty. The documentary takes a deeper look inside the case while examining the dark complexities burrowed beneath Baltimore’s troubled police department. The Slow Hustle is jammed packed with candid interviews from members within the city’s police force, journalists who have spotted inconsistencies within the case coupled with the reaction of Sean Suiter’s emotional family as they struggle to find an answer surrounding his murder.

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Sohn said she was initially approached to document the story six months after Suiter’s tragic death, but at the time, the city was still reeling with pain from Freddie Gray’s untimely passing.

“The detective actually died the night before the premiere of Baltimore Rising,” Sohn told MADAMENOIRE over zoom, noting that she was initially hesitant about moving forward with the documentary. “We almost canceled the premiere because the city was just under siege with the Gun Trace Task Force and corruption, but we moved forward. At that time, I even saw that there was a very interesting story, but the last thing I wanted to do after Baltimore Rising was to go back into a law enforcement-based film.”

In the years that followed, the Black community would be rocked yet again by the police brutality deaths of both George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. The incidents left Sohn even more unsettled about shedding light on Suiter’s difficult case.

“Remember that visceral feeling we all had, where everything was just a little bit too much? I realized after shooting Baltimore Rising that I had that feeling with me and I didn’t want to re-trigger that,” she explained. However, six months later, the busy director wondered if there was a different perspective she could potentially bring to the table that would help to fill in those missing pieces behind Suiter’s mysterious death. After meeting with the fallen detective’s family, multiple reporters, and esteemed editor and journalist D.Watkins, who had published a number of investigative pieces following the complicated case, Sohn knew she was on to something.

“I just saw that there were some missing pieces, some things that just didn’t sit right and it seemed as though these reporters might be able to get somewhere. I felt like D.Watkins, in particular, had a perspective on this that made it a microcosmic example of a macrocosmic situation on a few different levels.“

The documentary reveals the shadowy history of The Gun Trace Task Force, a special unit of Baltimore’s Police Department that committed a number of egregious crimes throughout the city’s recent history. As new evidence emerges in the documentary, viewers are taken on every last twist and turn that develops, including the testimony that Suiter was set to give against one of the brazenly corrupt task force members, just days before his death.

The Slow Hustle presents some puzzling questions. Was Sean Suiter’s death really a suicide or was it truly a hit organized by the Baltimore P.D. in an effort to silence him? Sohn spoke to a few key figures in the case including Baltimore’s former police commissioner Kevin Davis and Suiter’s former homicide partner Jonathan Jones (JJ) among other willing participants, but it wasn’t an easy feat.

“Active duty police did not want to speak, none of the IRB cops wanted to speak,” said Sohn. “Only the former police commissioner. Somehow I believe JJ must have gotten permission to speak. I don’t believe he appeared on camera without permission.” There was some hesitancy from a few witnesses who had been deeply impacted by unlawful members of The Gun Trace Task Force spearheaded by Sergeant Jenkins, the same officer Suiter was set to testify against in court and one of the key suspects examined in the detective’s murder case.

“There was one particular guy that Jenkins harassed terribly. He was a former accused drug kingpin that was, I believe, at the heart of the case against Jenkins,” Sohn said. “There were so many cases but there was one particularly egregious case where he was harassing this guy, scaling the walls of his home, and all kinds of things. That person I tried to speak with. I think some of the folks who had been abused by this group of officers were hesitant to speak and that’s understandable,” she explained. “There was a time when I thought we could establish how egregious these actions were through some of the voices of the people that they had harmed, but we were dealing with a lot of threats and only so much time.”

Where do things stand now with the Sean Suiter case? Sadly, there have been no new findings, Sohn revealed. “It’s still where it was at the end of the film. The police department has closed the case as a suicide and the medical examiner’s office has not changed the ruling from a homicide,” but Sohn remains hopeful that the Suiter family will eventually find justice, however, “change takes a long time,” she added. 

“That’s how the system works, it’s a slow hustle on your patience, wearing on your nerves. There’s a cynic inside of me when it comes to the government and public institutions. I think that we live in the matrix and we’re all getting hustled and just trying to make the best of it.”

The Slow Hustle is out now on HBO and available to stream on HBO Max.

 

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