I Got a Monster: The Rise and Fall of America's Most Corrupt Police Squad

Baynard Woods · Brandon Soderberg

Jul 2020 · Macmillan Audio · Narrated by Ryan Vincent Anderson

About this audiobook

The explosive true story of America's most corrupt police unit, the Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF), which terrorized the city of Baltimore for half a decade.

When Baltimore police sergeant Wayne Jenkins said he had a monster, he meant he had found a big-time drug dealer—one that he wanted to rob. This is the story of Jenkins and the Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF), a super group of dirty detectives who exploited some of America’s greatest problems: guns, drugs, toxic masculinity, and hypersegregation.

In the upside-down world of the GTTF, cops were robbers and drug dealers were the perfect victims, because no one believed them. When the federal government finally arrested the GTTF for robbery and racketeering in 2017, the stories of victims began to come out, revealing a vast criminal enterprise operating within the Baltimore Police Department.

Cops planted heroin to cover up a fatal crash that resulted from a botched robbery. They stole hundreds of thousands of dollars, faked video evidence, and forged a letter trying to break up the marriage of one of their victims to keep his wife from paying a lawyer. And a homicide detective was killed the day before he was scheduled to testify against the crooked cops.

I Got a Monster is the shocking history of the rise and fall of the most corrupt cops in America from Baynard Woods and Brandon Soderberg.

A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin's Press

Ratings and reviews

The author really went out of his way to mitigate the responsibility of the black officers in this book. Rather than acknowledging the reality, he makes it sound like a few vulnerable black officers were led astray by an evil white ringleader. Many of the facts from this book do not Jive with reports and documentaries that are also available on the subject. I wouldn't buy it again.

About the author

BAYNARD WOODS is a freelance writer living in Baltimore. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, and many other publications.

BRANDON SODERBERG is a reporter living Baltimore and was previously the Editor in Chief of the Baltimore City Paper and a contributing writer to SPIN. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Vice, The Village Voice and many other publications.