Jay Landsman

Jay Landsman is a retired homicide detective and actor. He was featured in David Simon's 1991 book about the Baltimore homicide unit Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets. According to the book, Landsman was the last of his family line on the Baltimore Police Department. His brother Jerry was a detective in the agency who left in the 1980s and their father was the department's first Jewish district commander.

The book was later developed into the television series Homicide: Life on the Street. He was the inspiration for the fictional character John Munch (also Jewish) on that show as well as a character named Jay Landsman on the television series The Wire, created by Simon (although the Landsman character is not played by Landsman himself, but by Delaney Williams). Landsman portrayed himself in a brief appearance on the HBO miniseries The Corner and, later, appeared in The Wire, playing the character of Lieutenant Dennis Mello. He appeared in season five of the food and travel show No Reservations, when host Anthony Bourdain stopped in Baltimore on a tour of America's rust belt.

Jay Landsman (The Wire)

Jay Landsman is a fictional character on the HBO drama The Wire, played by actor Delaney Williams.

Biography

Policing method

Landsman's role in the police department is that of a supervisory detective sergeant who rarely participates in investigative work. Landsman generally acts in the best interests of his subordinates especially those who give him the necessary clearances (closed cases). As a supervisor, Landsman acts in accordance with the wishes of his superior officers even though in some cases, he does not necessarily agree with specific commands. Examples of this are when he is ordered to have Bunk Moreland find a hospitalized detective's missing firearm in Season 3 and when a dead state's witness becomes an electoral issue in Season 4. Throughout the series, he is shown as a commander attempting to strike a balance between loyalty to subordinates and superiors, most often favoring the latter. Landsman has only been called to solve a few murders on his own as a supervisor. Landsman is generally jovial and provides a degree of comic relief in the series. He also possesses a shrewd understanding of the subtle politics in the chain of command, almost always successfully acting in self-preservation and self-promotion without making many enemies. He states that clearly to McNulty, during the first episode of season 2, by saying its all about self-preservation and it is too bad that McNulty never learned that. Overall, under Landsman's supervision, the homicide unit ends up often clearing many of the more challenging "whodunit" homicides occurring in Baltimore city proving him to be an effective sergeant within the department. However, he can be mildly bullying and tends to derive his good humor from schadenfreude though he is not generally malicious.