ED BURNS SPEAKS SOME OF THE REALEST TALK YOU'VE HEARD IN YOUR LIFE. AND AS WRITER, PRODUCER, AND INSPIRATION FOR HBO'S THE WIRE, IT'S HIS CANDOR AND CONNECTIONS THAT MAKE THE SPRAWLING BALTIMORE CRIME SAGA NUMBER ONE WITH A BULLET. NOW, AT THE DAWN OF THE SHOW'S FINAL SEASON, COMPLEX LOOKS AT THE MAN WHO BRINGS THE RAW UNCUT.

By Justin Monroe; Illustration by Sean Mccabe2002: ED BURNS HAS BEEN WATCHING HIM for a while now. Sitting a little ways off, just eyeballing the man with the scar snaking across his face. Something about the guy, Burns thinks, doesn't seem right. He's an actor, a damn fine one in fact, but the way he's holding his pistol-sidearm, with one hand, like something out of Menace II Society-is all wrong. After 20 years with the Baltimore Police Department, Burns knows how a no-nonsense stickup man would hold a pistol. So he sits down with the man, actor Michael K. Williams, there on the set of The Wire, and he shares a little street knowledge. He explains how Williams's character, the renegade bagman Omar Little, would handle his heat carefully, with two hands, to ensure that he hit no civilians. And Williams listens, because Burns knows the character. Hell, Omar is based on real guys Burns spent two decades playing cat-and-mouse with.

Since The Wire premiered five years ago, much has been made of its exceptionally honest portrayal of life in urban America, from the dregs of drug alleys and decaying public school systems to the heights of political power. Critics have almost universally fellated David Simon, the former BaltimoreSun reporter who created the show-and not to discredit Simon's storytelling talent, but without Burns the show just wouldn't be as...real. It's Burns, the 60-year-old ex-cop/ex-teacher/producer and writer, who infuses the show's mean streets with their snarl.

From the beginning of his career, Burns was a different kind of cop. As a soldier in Vietnam, he'd learned that a stranger in a strange land must respect his surroundings-a rule that applied equally to white police in inner-city Baltimore. While some officers hid behind the badge and demeaned the people they purported to serve and protect, Burns attempted to understand the community, building his reputation as an honest professional, separate from the racist and corrupt BPD. "You need to talk to people," he says now of his time walking the line between the law and the community. "You need to learn it." Even as Burns arrested criminals, he treated them as his equals, aware that their environment dictated their moral compass. "What [a criminal] did in his world, even though it sort of goes against the Ten Commandments, is the way he survived in his world," explains Burns. "Everything is shaded, so it's seldom simple, if ever."

It was that nuanced sense of the city that brought him respect from its inhabitants-even the ones he put behind bars. Take Donnie Andrews, a onetime stickup man and hit man (and one of the inspirations for Omar) who turned himself in to Burns on a murder charge in 1986, after his conscience got the better of him. "People understood where he was coming from," says Donnie of Burns. "He was doing his job, and he understood we were doing what we do. He understood the way of life in our community. He treated everybody real decent-like. He never judged."

With his 'hood pass and passion for the job, Burns built cases against major players-cases that became the starting point for The Wire. The Avon Barksdale wiretap story line from the show's first season bears a striking resemblance to the case Burns and his task force built against Melvin "Little Melvin" Williams, a brilliant and notorious East Coast drug trafficker who was finally nabbed in 1984. In a show-worthy twist (actually reminiscent of Dennis "Cutty" Wise's story line in Season Three), Melvin came out of prison after a 16-year bid and joined the show's cast, playing a church deacon.

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