--- title: Watch President Obama Interview the Creator of 'The Wire' David Simon description: Obama, a longtime fan of the HBO series, sat down with Simon to speak frankly about the war on drugs and the perils of law enforcement canonical: https://time.com/3761066/obama-the-wire-david-simon/ author: David Stout article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-03-27T04:28:04.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-01T09:03:13.886Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: Watch President Obama Interview 'The Wire's David Simon og:description: “Omar, by the way, is my favorite character.” og:url: https://time.com/3761066/obama-the-wire-david-simon/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc6eb3b83e112b6a4/6987858b3c16391487452751/obama-david-simon-the-wire.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2560 og:image:height: 1440 og:image:alt: Obama David Simon the Wire og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Watch President Obama Interview 'The Wire's David Simon twitter:description: “Omar, by the way, is my favorite character.” twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc6eb3b83e112b6a4/6987858b3c16391487452751/obama-david-simon-the-wire.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Watch President Obama Interview _The Wire_ Creator David Simon > Sponsored content. 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Terms and conditions apply. * Savings buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Savings Account. * No ATM fees from Ally Bank at Allpoint and Moneypass ATMs plus we reimburse for fees charged by other ATM owners nationwide up to $10 per statement cycle. * Early direct deposit offers eligible direct deposits up to two days sooner. * Spending buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Spending Account. ## Video: A Conversation with President Obama and The Wire Creator David Simon [Watch (HLS stream): A Conversation with President Obama and The Wire Creator David Simon](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/b0Sz0W3N.m3u8) (12:17)  _Published 2015-03-27. President Barack Obama, a long-time fan of the critically acclaimed HBO series The Wire, sat down with the show’s creator David Simon this week to speak frankly about America’s war on drugs and the perils of law enforcement._ by [David Stout](https://time.com/author/david-stout/) ## David Stout Mar 27, 2015 4:28 AM UTC by [David Stout](https://time.com/author/david-stout/) ## David Stout Mar 27, 2015 4:28 AM UTC A television writer couldn’t have scripted it better. President Barack Obama, a longtime fan of the critically acclaimed HBO series _The Wire,_ sat down with the show’s creator David Simon this week to speak frankly about America’s war on drugs and the perils of law enforcement. Simon, a vociferous critic of the federal government’s drug policies, pulled no punches as he spoke with the President. “What the drugs don’t destroy, the war against them tears apart,” said Simon. Obama appeared receptive to Simon’s criticism and insisted that things were slowly improving in the country. “The fact that we’ve got people talking about it in a smarter way, gives me a little \[encouragement\],” he said. ## Transcript At the front end I got to tell you I'm a huge fan of the The Wire. I think it's one of the greatest not just television shows but pieces of art in the last couple of decades. I was a huge fan of it. What is it that you saw, you learned, you heard that made you start thinking about. The, the, the culture of, of, the drug trade, and how, its impact on the inner cities, and, and that compelled you then to want to tell these stories? Well, I, I was in Baltimore, and it's a very, drug saturated city, or it certainly was in the early 1980s when I arrived. This was a time when people thought they could arrest their way out of a drug problem. Right. And, and they actually tried to do that. And what became increasingly obvious to me over the years of covering it was that when you devote yourselves to street level drug enforcement, you try to win the drug war. You only have a limited number of, of, of resources, limited amount of resources. And I watched the police department in Baltimore and then I noticed it in other cities. Other cities with the same sort of problems of of drug use. They stopped doing police work. Right. They were arresting people for drugs and that was presumptive police work but actually it wasn't and. At the same time that the numbers of drug arrests and the incarcerations for drug arrests went up and they were small incarcerations. They were two, three months in jail because you couldn't put them everywhere. Right. You couldn't build prisons fast enough. Right. Meanwhile the arrest rates for rape, robbery, murder were going down. And the one thing that makes cities safer is competent retroactive investigation of felonies. That actually can make a city safer. Right. But to do that you have to use and not be use by informants, you have to know how to testify in court, you have to write a search warrant that's going to hold up. You know the good news is some of the smarter police departments are starting to figure this out. Right that's true . >> We've seen reductions in violent crime. In most big cities in America. In some cases precipitously. Partly because I think there was an awareness that we were so invested in street level drug transactions that we were losing focus on what was really important. Right. Which was people wanted to be safe. On the other hand what we know is that a consequence of that was this massive trend towards incarceration. Even of nonviolent drug offenders. And I, I saw this during the period that you were. Mmhm. Reporting and then. You know, started to, to write for television, I saw this from the perspective of the state legislator. This, this, just explosion of, incarcerations, disproportionately African- American and Latino. And the challenge, which you depict in your show is. Folks go in, at great expense to the state, many times praying to become more hardened criminals while in prison. Come out. Out and are functioning basically unemployable. Right. And up looping back in. Permanently a part of the other America. Exactly. Can't be pulled back. Nobody incarnates their population at this level. Right. And to look at it when I came in as a police reporter the federal prison population was 34 % violent offenders. Yeah. When I left as a police reporter, 13 years later it was about 70 percent. Right. So these were less violent people getting longer sentences. Of course there was the elimination of parole in good time. You know, all you had was good time, and so, people were staying in. Right. And you're absolutely right, they come back out. Completely tarred. They can't vote, they can participate in their community, that they've lost track of families, families have been destroyed, communities have been upended. And if it was this Draconian and it worked, then maybe we could have a discussion that said what we're doing is working- [ INAUDIBLE ] is more work. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's terrible and it's we're losing a lot of humanity. But hey, it's working. Yeah. But it doesn't work. Right. It's draconian, and it doesn't work. I've, I've been looking at, because part of the fallout of, of what you describe is the economy's recovering. Unemployment's coming down drastically. But one of the puzzles we have is, we still have low participation rates, among, the population in the aggregate, but when you break down. Why people are not getting back into the labor force even as jobs are being created. A big chunk of that is, is the young male population. With a felony history. With felony histories. Yeah. And so now where we have that opportunity to give them. A pathway towards, a responsible, life, they're foreclosed. And that's counterproductive. The guy who was the model for the character Omar. Yeah. In the Wire was a real guy named Donnie Andrews. I never thought I'd be saying his name in the White House, but he, he, he's the guy who lived the life on the street. Yeah. He spent years robbing drug dealers. He lived. He lived hard Yeah And he eventually caught a 17 year bit, and he deserved it, but he went in, he wasn't caught. He actually went in on conscious because it finally got to him. Yeah And he did everything that the prosecutors wanted him to do and he came, he came out 17 years later, and all he wanted to do was to give back Right to West Baltimore. He'd taken so much. And he, he'd been in for 17 years. He just wanted to address himself to the disaster. Yeah, and on paper that man who is, who's an extraordinary man he was one of the most amazing people I've met in my life, on paper he was a, a convicted felon and a convicted murderer. And there was no. That there was nothing that could get him from that extremity. Yeah. You know, multiply that by hundreds of thousands of lives that have been disconnected and have no way to channel back into. Yeah. Into, into, it's Well, and, and, part of what Omar's, by the way my favorite character. I was worried about that when you said it. [ LAUGH ] It's but yeah, part of what your show depicted though is also the, the that there's a generational element to this, right? Mm- hmm. So you've got entire generations of men being locked up which means entire generations of boys growing up either without a father or if they see their dad. They're seeing them in prison. Right. I mean, this is not happening in a vacuum. These are the places in America where the industrialization has had the most effect. Right. And where unemployment rates, the actual unemployment rates among young black males in my city are, are, are, they're no resemblance to the actual unemployment rate nationally. Right. And so that's something that has to be countered, which is the drug trade itself. It's like a company town, and, and this is, this is a industry so large, and with so much money around it, that it's hard to, it's hard to get around it if you grow up amid it. Yeah. And, and certainly without, without role models that, that know how to maneuver around it. And to undo that. Taking the overlay that is the drug war, and, and at least rationing it down and making it proportional in some way is essential, because right now, you know, what, what, what drugs don't destroy the war against them is ripping apart. Well here, here, here, here, here's the good news. There is a, a increasing realization. On the left, but also on the right, politically that what we're doing is counterproductive. Either from a libertarian perspective, the way we treat nonviolent drug crimes is, is. Problematic and from a fiscal perspective is breaking the bank. Right. They end up spending so much more on prison than you would with these kids being in school or even going to college. That it, it's counter productive and it means everybody's taxes are going up or at least services that everybody uses are being squeezed. Or we can't hire cops to. Deal with violent crime, as you talked about. We're all we're all responsible for at least finding a solution to this. And the encouraging thing is, I think awareness is increasing. In part because violent crime has gone down in a lot of big cities, people are more open to having a discussion about this. They're not as frightened. And you know, I think we have to seize that opportunity but. Part of the challenge is gonna be, making sure number one, that, we humanize, what so often on the local news is Right Just a bunch of, shadowy characters, and, and, tell their stories, and, and that's where the work you've done is so important. Then the second things is enlisting law enforcement as an ally on this. And Eric Holder, my attorney general, we started talking about this several years ago when I first came into office. And one of the things that we tried to do is to change how we talked to U. S. attorneys and their offices. About, what is a, a measure of effective prosecution. Mm- hm. And, when we came into office, I think what was probably true in a lot of states attorneys office, the measure was, how much time do you get? Charge the maximum? Charge the max. Yeah. And, you know, our point was. Effectiveness as a prosecutor involves, thinking, about justice and being proportional in, how you think about these issues. And, and, and that's something we can do administratively. But, ultimately we're gonna need legislation and that's where raising awareness is gonna- Exactly. Be important. And law enforcement and prosecutors. Have to be able to talk about this, and we have to, you know, let them know, and, and, you show this in, in, in, The Wire as well. In the same way you got to be able to humanize, those involved in the drug trade, we have to remind ourselves about, that the police. They got a scary, tough difficult job, and if the r, the rest of society is saying just go deal with this, and we don't want to hear about it. Right. And, and, and, and you're just on the front lines, and just keep it out of our sight lines, and, and, it's not our problem. You know, we're betraying them as well. And ultimately you're going to have to address some of the environment, environmental issues. And I know that's not fashionable because the notion is, " Oh, you know, you don't want to make excuses for criminals ". What we understand and what perhaps. One of the most moving sections of the wire was that whole depiction of the schools, in Baltimore Public Schools, is, is that if, if, kids are left so far behind that they don't have recourse they're going to see what else is available to, to survive. They're gonna learn. They're gonna learn something. [ CROSSTALK ] [ INAUDIBLE ] Yeah, yeah. And, and, and the and so we're gonna have to think about schools, and counselors and mental health and ultimately jobs and reindustrialization and I think we, we understand all that. But if we s, can start down this path to a more productive way of thinking about drugs and, and, and its intersection with, with law enforcement, 20 years from now we can say to ourselves, well maybe we we got a little smarter. And, you know, we didn't, we didn't get here overnight. We're not gonna get out of it overnight. But, the, the fact that we've got people talking about it, in a, in a smarter way, gets me a little encouraged. From your mouth to god's ear. Yeah. I enjoyed it. Thank you very much. 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