One thing The Wire does better than almost any other show out there* is show us how absolutely everything in Baltimore is connected; the fate of one institution or group has a ripple effect that impacts other institutions and groups. For example, a rivalry between a high-ranking police officer and a stevedores union official (having to do with a stained glass window in a church) has an impact on the drug trade because the dock workers are involved in bringing drugs into the city from abroad. Furthermore, the show points out how poor decisions high places, such as police command or city hall, can trickle down and affect the people who are supposed to be protected by the decision makers.
The former notion, that everything is interdependent upon everything else, is a very real concept. Although I hate to put things in such crude terms, when running a city, many things comes down to money, and when you shift money to one place, it is inherently shifted away from somewhere else. In addition, institutions are run by people who form relationships, and depending on how people interact, certain institutions may get more or less favorable treatment. Along those lines, politics and elections matter more than they should. Politicians desire to stay in their elected offices, so they might not make the same decisions in an election year as they would as newly elected or lame duck officers. For example, contrast the difference in Judge Phelan's attitude towards the Barksdale investigation in Season 1; in the series pilot, when McNulty tells Phelan about the reach of the Barksdale drug ring and the possibility of bringing them down, Phelan readily gets behind the idea. However, a few months later, when Phelan is up for reelection (he is a state judge rather than a federal judge), his support nearly disappears until he wins. As many elements of a police investigation are dependent upon court permission, this considerably hinders the investigation.
The police depend on the courts for essential parts of their investigation. The drug trade relies upon the dock workers to help import drugs into Baltimore. The dock workers, who are hurting due to the dwindling shipping trade and advent of machines that make them obsolete, depend on the drug trade to get them money on the side. The police need city hall for money, city hall needs "results" from the police department to keep incumbents in power. And things have become so ingrained that any attempt to make a positive change ultimately fails. As detailed in my last post, Colvin and Carcetti both tried to change the way things were done, only to be met with resistance.
The second point, about poor decisions in the conference rooms of city hall and police command have consequences on the streets is very cynical (as is most of the show), but The Wire very effectively illustrates how this can often happen. To go back to the Hamsterdam example, instead of using the whole experiment as a wake-up call about the ineffectiveness of bust-by-bust policing and viewing the drug problem as a "war," the department fired one of their most forward-thinking, reasonable, and honest commanders and brought back the status quo of putting dealers on every corner, causing innocent civilians to live in fear. Or look at the police station's preference to hold press conferences, complete with "dope on the damn table," rather than keep a low profile and continue investigations. When a task force seized a large amount of drugs and money from the lieutenant of a kingpin they were trying to capture due to information gained from a wiretap, command wanted to hit other "stash houses" turned up by the wire so that they could hold a press conference with all of the captured drugs in an attempt to show the public how good of a job they were doing. Never mind that doing so would potentially tip off the dealers as to the existence of the wire tap.
The Wire is more than a "cop" show. It's a show about a city, and is probably the most effective show ever produced about just how connected we are to each other, regardless of who we are, how much money we make, or what we do.
Up next: Death becomes them...
*Contrast this with Dexter for example. This write-up of a Season 5 episode explains that the plot point about how backlash against the police station in the press is hardly a threat because the show does not spend any time exploring the press or how the backlash affects the police department.
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