Who Speaks for You?: The Inside Story of the Prosecutor Who Took Down Baltimore’s Most Crooked Cops

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.)