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Herc (The Wire)
Thomas "Herc" Hauk is a fictional character on the HBO drama ''The Wire'', played by Domenick Lombardozzi. The series introduces Herc as a detective in the Baltimore Police Department's Narcotics Unit, begrudgingly detailed to the initial Barksdale investigation. He is generally portrayed as encapsulating the failings of the contemporary Baltimore police officer: simple-minded, concerned with petty street arrests and minor drug charges, and priding himself and his colleagues on banging heads "the Western District way." He is also the partner and best friend of Ellis Carver, the two rarely being unpaired until later seasons. Following his promotion to sergeant, he is dismissed from the force, subsequently finding employment as a private investigator for attorney—and invariant legal advisor for drug organizations— Maurice Levy. Biography Season 1 Herc and Carver work in Narcotics with Detective Kima Greggs. All three join the Barksdale detail headed by their shift lieutenant, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Wire
''The Wire'' is an American Crime film, crime drama Television show, television series created and primarily written by author and former police reporter David Simon. The series was broadcast by the cable network HBO in the United States. ''The Wire'' premiered on June 2, 2002, and ended on March 9, 2008, comprising 60 episodes over five seasons. The idea for the show started out as a police drama loosely based on the experiences of his writing partner Ed Burns, a former homicide detective and public school teacher. Set and produced in Baltimore, Maryland, ''The Wire'' introduces a different institution of the city and its relationship to law enforcement in each season, while retaining characters and advancing storylines from previous seasons. The five subjects are, in chronological order: the illegal drug trade, the port system, the city government and bureaucracy, education and schools, and the print news medium. Simon chose to set the show in Baltimore because of his familiar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pocket Billiards
Pool is a classification of cue sports played on a table with six pockets along the , into which balls are deposited. "Pool billiards" is sometimes hyphenated and/or spelled with a singular "billiard". The WPA itself uses "pool-billiard" in its logo but "pool-billiards" in its legal notices. The organization compounds the words to result in an acronym of "WPA", "WPBA" having already been taken by the Women's Professional Billiards Association. Normal English grammar would not hyphenate here, and the term is actually a Germanism. A general rules booklet on pool games in general, including eight-ball, nine-ball and several others. Each specific pool game has its own name; some of the better-known include eight-ball, blackball, nine-ball, ten-ball, seven-ball, straight pool, one-pocket, and bank pool. The generic term pocket billiards is sometimes also used, and favored by some pool-industry bodies, but is technically a broader classification, including games such as snooker, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Howard "Bunny" Colvin
Howard "Bunny" Colvin is a fictional character on the HBO drama ''The Wire'', played by actor Robert Wisdom. Colvin is a wise and able police major in the Baltimore's Western District, alienated by the careerism and bureaucracy rampant in the Baltimore Police Department and the detrimental social effects of the War on Drugs. Close to retirement, he secretly breaks chain of command and puts his resources into "Hamsterdam," three zones within his district where drug dealers are pressured to non-violently congregate in exchange for informal legal sanction. Colvin also concentrates policing in these areas and attracts important ground-level social services, such as needle and condom distribution. Despite unprecedented statistical gains, Colvin is forced to retire from the force. He later becomes a field researcher alongside academic Dr. David Parenti in Baltimore city schools. In this role, Colvin falls into the guardianship of Namond Brice. Character storyline Colvin joined t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nick Sobotka
Nickolas Andrew Sobotka is a fictional character on the HBO drama ''The Wire'', played by actor Pablo Schreiber. Nick is the cousin of Ziggy Sobotka, the wayward and rebellious son of Nick's uncle Frank Sobotka. Plot details Season 2 Nick is a dockworker in the Port of Baltimore, and works for his uncle Frank Sobotka, the secretary treasurer for a stevedores union. He often has to keep his cousin (and Frank's son) Ziggy out of trouble, something his uncle appreciates. Despite Nick's disdain for Ziggy's antics, Nick shows considerable patience and seems to genuinely care about Ziggy. Involved in his uncle's smuggling operation, Nick often serves as Frank's go-between in meetings with Spiros "Vondas" Vondopoulos. At the diner Vondas uses as an office, Nick acquires the serial numbers of cargo containers being smuggled in by The Greek. Nick has a girlfriend, Aimee, with whom he has a daughter, Ashley. They want to move in together, but are unable to afford a place of their own. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dunlop Sport
Dunlop Sport is a British sports equipment manufacturing company established in 1910 that focuses on racquet sports, more specifically tennis, squash, padel and badminton. Products by Dunlop Sport include rackets, strings, balls, shuttlecocks, and bags. Sportswear and clothing line includes t-shirts, shorts, skirts, jackets, pants, socks, caps, sneakers, and wristbands. Dunlop Sport is operated by SRI Sports, a subsidiary of Japanese conglomerate Sumitomo Rubber Industries, which acquired the Dunlop brand in 2017. In the past, Dunlop also manufactured golf equipment. History Dunlop was established as a company manufacturing goods from rubber in 1889. The company entered the sporting goods market in 1910, when it began to manufacture rubber golf balls at its base in Birmingham. The company introduced the Maxfli golf ball in 1922. Dunlop extended into tennis ball manufacture in 1924. In 1925, F A Davis was acquired, which had tennis racket manufacturing expertise. Dunlop ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Confidential Informant
An informant (also called an informer or, as a slang term, a “snitch”) is a person who provides privileged information about a person or organization to an agency. The term is usually used within the law-enforcement world, where informants are officially known as confidential human sources (CHS), or criminal informants (CI). It can also refer pejoratively to someone who supplies information without the consent of the involved parties."The Weakest Link: The Dire Consequences of a Weak Link in the Informant Handling and Covert Operations Chain-of-Command" by M Levine. ''Law Enforcement Executive Forum'', 2009 The term is commonly used in politics, industry, entertainment, and academia. In the United States, a confidential informant or "CI" is "any individual who provides useful and credible information to a law enforcement agency regarding felonious criminal activities and from whom the agency expects or intends to obtain additional useful and credible information regarding ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polish American
Polish Americans ( pl, Polonia amerykańska) are Americans who either have total or partial Polish ancestry, or are citizens of the Republic of Poland. There are an estimated 9.15 million self-identified Polish Americans, representing about 2.83% of the U.S. population. Polish Americans are the second-largest Central European ethnic group after German Americans, and the eighth largest ethnic group overall in the United States. The first Polish immigrants came to the Jamestown colony in 1608, twelve years before the Pilgrims arrived in Massachusetts. Two Polish volunteers, Casimir Pulaski and Tadeusz Kościuszko, led armies in the Revolutionary War and are remembered as American heroes. Overall, around 2.2 million Poles and Polish subjects immigrated into the United States, between 1820 and 1914, chiefly after national insurgencies and famine. They included former Polish citizens of Roman Catholic, Protestant, Jewish or other minority descent. Exact immigration figures are unk ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frank Sobotka
Francis "Frank" Sobotka is a fictional character in of the HBO drama ''The Wire'', played by the actor Chris Bauer. Plot Frank is a respected Polish-American treasurer for the International Brotherhood of Stevedores at the Baltimore docks. As the ''pater familias'' for the docks' longshoremen population, it is his job to manage the finances of the labor union and make sure that workers are taken care of - a task made harder by the decline of the local shipping industry and lack of available hours. Desperate to return prosperity to the docks, he begins making overtures to lobbyists and politicians to support initiatives that will make the port a more attractive shipping location. His two main objectives are to have the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal dredged to increase the depth for incoming ships, and to re-open the grain pier. Bruce DiBiago, a lobbyist, serves as go-between for Sobotka and politicians such as State Senator Clay Davis. In order to obtain the necessary fu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Labor Union
A trade union (labor union in American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers intent on "maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment", ch. I such as attaining better wages and benefits (such as holiday, health care, and retirement), improving working conditions, improving safety standards, establishing complaint procedures, developing rules governing status of employees (rules governing promotions, just-cause conditions for termination) and protecting the integrity of their trade through the increased bargaining power wielded by solidarity among workers. Trade unions typically fund their head office and legal team functions through regularly imposed fees called ''union dues''. The delegate staff of the trade union representation in the workforce are usually made up of workplace volunteers who are often appointed by members in democratic elections. The trade union, through an elected leadership and bargaining committee, b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stevedore
A stevedore (), also called a longshoreman, a docker or a dockworker, is a waterfront manual laborer who is involved in loading and unloading ships, trucks, trains or airplanes. After the shipping container revolution of the 1960s, the number of dockworkers required declined by over 90%. Etymology The word ''stevedore'' originated in Portugal or Spain, and entered the English language through its use by sailors. It started as a phonetic spelling of ''estivador'' (Portuguese) or ''estibador'' (Spanish), meaning ''a man who loads ships and stows cargo'', which was the original meaning of ''stevedore'' (though there is a secondary meaning of "a man who stuffs" in Spanish); compare Latin ''stīpāre'' meaning ''to stuff'', as in ''to fill with stuffing''. In Ancient and modern Greek, the verb στοιβάζω (stevazo) means pile up. In the United Kingdom, people who load and unload ships are usually called ''dockers''; in Australia, they are called ''dockers'' or ''wharfies''; and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stan Valchek
Stanislaus "Stan" Valchek is a fictional character on the HBO drama ''The Wire (TV series), The Wire'', played by actor Al Brown. Biography Valchek is the Polish-American commander of the Baltimore Police Department in the Southeastern district, home to many of the remaining ethnic white neighborhoods in Baltimore. More a politician than a policeman, he has ties with various Democratic Party (United States), Democratic organizations close to Baltimore City Hall, City Hall, most notably the politically influential developer Politicians of The Wire#Andy Krawczyk, Andrew Krawczyk. His political savvy helps him quickly ascend the ranks, though commanding officers such as Commissioner Ervin Burrell and Deputy Commissioner William Rawls dislike him. Valchek is Roland Pryzbylewski, Roland "Prez" Pryzbylewski's father-in-law. Season 1 Valchek first appears in a meeting with Deputy Commissioner Burrell and Lieutenant Cedric Daniels, trying to smooth over Prez's drunken maiming of a four ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Baltimore
Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic, and the 30th most populous city in the United States with a population of 585,708 in 2020. Baltimore was designated an independent city by the Constitution of Maryland in 1851, and today is the most populous independent city in the United States. As of 2021, the population of the Baltimore metropolitan area was estimated to be 2,838,327, making it the 20th largest metropolitan area in the country. Baltimore is located about north northeast of Washington, D.C., making it a principal city in the Washington–Baltimore combined statistical area (CSA), the third-largest CSA in the nation, with a 2021 estimated population of 9,946,526. Prior to European colonization, the Baltimore region was used as hunting grounds by the Susquehannock Native Americans, who were primarily settled further northwest than where the city was later built. Colonist ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
