Official misconduct by Baltimore homicide detectives has led to long-delayed exonerations in more than a dozen cases, according to a report by New York magazine. The law enforcement officers who have been accused of a range of misbehavior in a number of lawsuits includes several men used directly by writer David Simon as inspiration in creating The Wire. Of the 25 men convicted and later exonerated of murder in Baltimore, at least six had their cases worked on by detectives named in Simon’s book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets. This includes Gary Washington, who was sentenced to life in prison after detectives—including the direct inspiration for Wire main staple Bunk Moreland—allegedly pressured a 12-year-old into falsely identifying him. According to a lawsuit Washington filed against the city and the Baltimore Police Department in 2019, detectives told the child, “Cooperate, or you’ll never see your mother again.” The 12-year-old “crumbled under the pressure,” according to the suit. He became “the state’s entire case,” a judge later wrote. Washington would go on to spend more than three decades behind bars.