Here are 10 Lies from The Wire series

In The Wire universe, lying is an essential part to survive the Game. It is an expected behavior from a criminal. But you would expect other, normal people to tell the truth most of the time, right? Well, obviously that is not the case.

Politicians live and breathe lies, police bosses play stat games to please politicians and lie to the public about what they are actually doing about crimes. Teachers are also juking statistics to save their faces. Even some journalists fabricate lies to further their careers. Here are some major lies from The Wire (2002).

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Tap, Tap, Tap

Bodie aka Preston Broadus escaped from a juvenile facility where he was detained after he attacked detective Patrick Mahon. Bodie came back to the pit and bragged that if it was D’Angelo Barksdale, he would still be locked up in the Boy’s Village. Dee reminded Bodie that he was in the City Jail for 8 months for a murder charge. Bodie again undermined Dee by telling him that he only has a one body on him. Dee told Bodie, Poot and Wallace need to ask around because he has more than one body on him and proceeded to tell about Deirdre Kresson and how he shot her. Dee lied to them to increase his street creds, because later D’Angelo and Wee Bay both admitted to the police that Wee Bay killed her and D’Angelo only drove Wee Bay to her house.

Charlie Sollers, the elusive drug kingpin

According to Prop Joe, Charlie Sollers was a drug dealer from the 60s. He only sold drugs without having a street rep, so nobody knows his name. Stringer Bell was interested in the history of the Baltimore underworld, even he was clueless to the existence of this Charlie Sollers.

Who is this Charlie Sollers? Google searches do not show anything, so he seems not to be a real life gangster. Some fans think that Carlie Sollers was based on Frank Matthews who was a notorious drug trafficker in his time, but the problem is Frank Matthews was mentioned by Butchie in the next episode and Frank “Pee Wee” Matthews was not operating under the radar like Charlie Sollers.

Second and most popular fan theory is that Charlie Sollers never existed, Prop Joe lied about Charlie Sollers and created his story to persuade Stringer Bell to accept his deal.

Tips about officer Dorzerman’s missing gun

Jay Landsman sent Bunk to the detention center to interview some inmates because they claimed to know about the missing gun. But after interviewing them, Bunk realized that all of them were lying in hope of reducing their prison sentences.

Nevertheless, that scene was hilarious. One inmate asked Bunk to release him and two other inmates, so they could help to find the gun. Another one heard that someone named Dink has the gun. But he is not sure whether it was Dink Dink or Inky Dink or Fat Dink or Flatnose Dink. Next one needed bunk to help him with four murder charges. Final one offered to find a gun for Bunk because he could get guns.

Lies surrounding Stringer Bell’s death

Apart from Omar, Brother Mouzone, Andy Krawczyk and Avon Barksdale, no one else knows what really happened to Stringer Bell. Everyone else assumed that Marlo got to Stringer Bell because Marlo and Avon were beefing at the time.

Barksdale crew was all riled up and eager to war with Marlo’s crew. Slim Charles met with Avon to tell him that they are ready to go. But Avon confessed to Slim that Marlo had nothing to do with Stringer’s death. Slim Charles replied to Avon in his wise manner “It’s what war is, you know? Once you in it, you in it. If it’s a lie, then we fight on that lie.”

Marlo’s crew and Marlo himself also clueless to what happened to Stringer Bell. In the rim shop, Vinson warned Marlo that Avon is going to pin the death on Marlo. Marlo replied that he doesn’t mind to take the credit because it is one of them good problems. Then he played into the lie and spread the word that they killed Stringer Bell. When Slim Charles was staking out the rim shop, we see Snoop was lying to a corner crew including Fruit, how she witnessed that Chris cornered Stringer Bell and despite Stringer’s pathetic begging how Chris had executed Stringer.

Lie detecting photocopy machine

In the beginning of the season five, we see homicide detectives put a hand of a young corner boy on a photocopy machine claiming it is in fact a truth detecting machine. Detectives asked questions and kid answered them. Detectives showed the kid pre-printed True, False statements claiming the machine knows the truth. Foolish kid really believed it and finally confessed to a shooting.

Bunk asked Ed Norris how many year they have been doing these kind of things? Ed replied “20, at least.”

Maurice Levy lied to defend Bodie and Savino

In The Breaking Bad, Jesse Pinkman said that they need a “criminal” lawyer. They had Saul Goodman, The Wire has Maurice Levy. He literally suggested Avon Barksdale, Stringer Bell and Marlo Stanfield to eliminate anyone who could be used against them in the court. He also lies and manufactures evidence to defend his clients.

Preston “Bodie” Broadus hit and knocked out Patrick Mahon, so police beat him up and sent to a boy’s village. Bodie escaped it and got caught again, got beat up again and got lock up for the second time. Stringer Bell saw potential in Bodie and sent Levy to get him free. Levy turned up with another lawyer from his firm, claiming they were doing pro-bono case and presented documents to show that Bodie has sponsorship from police athletic league, and also Bodie is enrolled for the GED program at the Baltimore City Community College. With help of these bogus documents Levy was able to paint a picture that Bodie is a promising young man who was misguided by older traffickers. Levy even managed to avoid home monitoring and settled for calling Bodie’s probation officer twice a week. Bodie stood up and said “Cool. Whatever……. Your honor.” And he was out.

Savino Bratton was the one who led Orlando and Kima to an ambush which resulted in Orando’s death and fatally wounding Kima. Since Kima was there as a part of an undercover operation, police had Savino talking on tape. But after the shooting Savino went into hiding and could not be found. McNulty went into Levy’s office and threaten to investigate Levy unless he bring in his former client, Savino. Levy turned in Savino. Police were planning to flip Savino in order to identify the shooters. They got Savino on tape trying to make a drug deal. But Levy came with a bag which had a pack of baking soda in it and claimed that Savino was trying sell baking soda to Orlando in order to defraud him of 30,000 dollars. Levy said Savino had no part in the ambush. After that police had nothing on Savino apart from an attempted scam, to which the penalty was a maximum 3 years prison sentence and a 5000 dollar fine. Savino took the years.

Clay Davis rainmade Stringer Bell

Clay Davis who was born with a silver tongue and eager to get into anyone’s pocket who is dumb enough to trust him.

He had Stringer Bell wrapped around his finger and sold him a dream claiming that he could get a federal grant for a development project. He even tried to sell that dream to Avon. Even though Avon wasn’t believing in it, Stringer was fully committed to it because he always wanted to evolve beyond the drug game. So Stringer started a development project and was waiting for a federal grant, meanwhile Davis and Andy Krawczyk started to bleed Stringer dry by asking money for various expenses. Ultimately Clay Davis took 250,000 dollars from Stringer Bell to bribe federal officials in order to pass the grant, but even after spending a quarter million dollars on bribes, Stringer did not make the cut. Finally Stringer sought advice from Levy and Levy explained to Stringer that Clay Davis had been lying to Stringer in order to rain-made him. Apparently it was an age-long scam run by politicians to defraud naïve people like Stringer. Later Clay Davis boasted with Lester Freamon about how he bled dry a gangster and said the trick was to separate him from his lawyer, Levy. Ironically Levy protects his clients from vultures like Clay Davis.

Clay Davis also took money from Tommy Carcetti, promising to help him with the election and immediately publicly endorsed Carcetti’s opponent, incumbent mayor Royce. After the election, he met and made amends with victorious Carcetti without an ounce of shame about his lies.

Fuzzy Dunlop, the fake C.I. #238

Fuzzy Dunlop was created by Herc and Carver duo as a quick and dirty way to break a case. This lie initially helped Herc and Carver, But later destroyed Herc’s career. It all began when Detective Herc convinced his friend, Detective Carver to loan a surveillance microphone in order to eavesdrop on their target, Frog. They put the mic inside a tennis ball and placed that tennis ball near Frog’s corner. When Frog saw the ball he picked it up and threw it away without realizing there was a bug in it and someone was listening to his drug-talk. The ball ended up on the street and a truck ran over it destroying the hidden mic. Apparently the mic which was supposedly “Something that can stand up to the pressure of the modern urban crime environment” wasn’t as sturdy as advertised. Since they could not return the bug, Carver ended up in debt to the store.

Before it got destroyed the bug gave them a lead to connect Nick Sobotka to the drug trade. Herc and Carver attributed that information to a nonexistent C.I. (Confidential Informant). They took a photo of one of Herc’s cousins, Bernard and gave him a fake street name called Fuzzy Dunlop. It’s funny how they came up with that name. Dunlop is a brand of tennis balls and tennis balls are woolly which make them fuzzy, hence Fuzzy Dunlop. They filed this fake C.I. and got a C.I. number (C.I. 238). Then they successfully fooled their supervisor, Lieutenant Daniels to write checks for Fuzzy Dunlop in exchange for information. That way Carver was able to recover his loses which was $1250.

In a later season Lieutenant Charles Marimow aka the Unit Killer had assigned Detective Herc to find some leads about Marlo Stanfield. Herc again tried to use some spy tactics without proper authorization. He installed a camera to spy on Marlo. Unlucky for Herc, Marlo’s crew had the best counter surveillance practices among the gangs in the show. So they knew right away about the camera. Marlo pulled few tricks to lure out the person who was spying on him. He first led investigators to arrest an innocent women but could not figure out who was behind the spy camera. Then upon Prop Joe’s advice he stole the camera which successfully lured out furious Herc. At the end Herc gained a harassment complaint from an innocent Jamaican woman, lost a surveillance camera which he had got from ISD without going through proper channels, and he had nothing to show for his supervisor, Lt. Marimow.

Wrongful arrest of the woman put Lieutenant Marimow on Detective Herc’s trail and he demanded to meet Fuzzy Dunlop whose bad information led to the arrest. Herc refused to bring Fuzzy Dunlop for a meeting. Later Herc decided to confess about Fuzzy Dunlop and the missing camera to Marimowe, but at that point Marimowe had already reviewed Herc’s paperwork and came to the conclusion that the confidential informant number 238, Fuzzy Dunlop does not exist. However, before he could act upon his suspicions, Lieutenant Marimowe got transferred out from the Major Crimes Unit. But the Fuzzy Dunlop lie did not stay buried for long. Like a tennis ball, it bounced back because of political tension which caused by Herc when he harassed a reverend over (again) bad intel. In order to diffuse the political situation, Mayor let Commissioner Burrell to dig deep enough to find some dirt on Herc, so they could fire Herc to appease local reverends. Finally IID agents came looking for the missing camera from ISD. After the trial, Detective Herc lost his job over the missing camera and the fake C.I.

Pathological lying of Scott Templeton

Scott Templeton built his career around strings of lies. He was a GA (General Assignment) Reporter at The Baltimore Sun. He always thinks high of himself and quite ambitious.

First known incident was the Seafood Poisoning story. Story was legit and Scott done nothing wrong. But his story helped a woman to run a scam. The city desk editor Augustus Haynes wanted him to look in to the matter, but Scott wasn’t ready to change his narrative. So he came up with a ridiculous lie and told Gus that the scammer is also an identity thief who was known to use the name of the woman featured in his article.

Then Scott found out that it is easier to write perfect quotes, stories himself and attribute them to anonymous sources rather than interview actual people to write up mundane truth. That way his articles turned out sensational.

When McNulty started his lie about a serial killer, Scott struck gold. Scott Templeton leaned in to that lie and started to spew his own lies about this non-existing serial killer. He even cranked called himself claiming it was the serial killer.

Only two people at the news room saw through Scott Templeton’s lies. The city desk editor, Gus always suspected that Scott is fabricating stories. Another editor, Rebecca Corbett also saw through Scott’s ridiculous writing style. Gus even went to senior editors to voice his concerns about Scott Templeton and provided enough evidence to prove that Scott is indeed fabricating his stories. But senior editors did not listen to any of it, because they had another agenda. Executive editor James Whiting and managing editor Thomas Klebanow liked Scott Templeton’s writing style and saw his potential to win the Pulitzer Prize. So they protected Scott and finally guided him to win the prize.

Biggest lie of them all, McNulty’s serial killer

Detective Jimmy McNulty found that it is possible to falsify evidence to make a natural death looks like a murder. After that, Jimmy had this bright idea to manufacture a serial killer to get funding, so he could continue Marlo’s case. Lester Freamon helped him and Leander Sydnor went along with them. A lying news reporter, Scott Templeton added his own spin to the lie by manufacturing fake news.

All of them thought there was no downside to the lie because the victims were homeless people. But we see through Kima’s interviews those people had families and they cared about some of the victims, and it brought great pain to them, and they never learnt the truth because the mayor and higher-ups in the police covered-up the truth.