MovieChat Forums > The Wire (2002) Discussion > Ok might be a stupid question. But wonde...

Ok might be a stupid question. But wondering about the wire taps.


I don't know anything about this stuff. Why was is so hard to get the wire taps into the phones. Or was it more about cracking the code and they wanted to get everything perfect to get them. Maybe I've seen way to many cop shows that you can easily install anything.

Sorry if this a stupid question.

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Which season are you specifically talking about? They really talked about Wire taps season 1 and season 5

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Season 1

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Season 1 they showed how hard it was to get a wire tap on the phone. I liked how they showed how they really had to push the judge and get specific details in the search warrant, no other show before this had done things like that. They also struggled with the code that the people talking on the phones used.

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Alright thanks

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The problem was that the police department wasn't running any real investigations into these gangs. Once the unit was assembled they didn't even had any information on the target other than his name. It's not enough to just record someone's coded conversation, and Avon never talked on the phone at all. Besides deputy of operations wanted nothing to do with the case and was pressuring Daniels to shut the investigation down asap.

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Yeah that's what I was kind of thinking but wasn't sure. I am so brainwashed by some of these cop shows that they can get a court order in 10 minutes

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Plus it costs the police department a ton of money to wiretap phones. Which is something the higher officers felt it was a waste of time to do considering they really had no evidence. I know it was something like several thousand dollars a day just to listen to a few phone calls.

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That's money that no police department would want to burn unless they really had a good reason to.

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