Wasn't Mcnulty partly responsible for it by reaching out to the kid? He was so torn by the two shots that Kima took, but he seemed to suffer little contrition for the death of Wallace. He should have known that by trying to make Wallace a witness he was putting his life in grave danger.
shareI don't think Mcnulty knew that Wallace was going to return to the towers. They placed him with his grandmother in the country, not only to detox and get himself clean but also for witness protection. However, Wallace took it upon himself to leave protective custody and return. Perhaps Wallace figured that since he hadn't testified in court then he could just recant his prior statements, implicating Barksdale crew. Then he could return to the towers and pick up where he left off and no one would ever know that he was about turn snitch. But what he didn't realize was how suspicious he was looking in the process.
I woke up this way...
Even going to visit him in the projects puts him under suspicion. Besides, the police force is corrupt and has known to provide inadequate witness protection in the past. So, I think even trying to co-opt a kid like him as a witness was an irresponsible act.
Its true that Wallace made an error of judgement while he was in witness protection, but I would not expect a 16 year old ex drug dealer, who is away from the only place and people he knows, and is unsupervised , to make the most rational decisions in life.
He was supervised. He went to live in the country with his grandmother and family. In fact, the grandmother was the one who informed them that Wallace had gone missing. That leads me to believe that she must have been a competent, caring and responsible adult for even noticing and reporting it because a lot of parents on the show wouldn't have given a damn were their children were. Plus the reason Wallace wanted to return to the towers was because he was bored and he didn't have anything to get into, possibly because she was keeping him from hanging out all night, which is another reason I think that they left him in pretty safe custody.
I woke up this way...
Daniels drove him out to the grandmother's place, and beyond that, well.....there was a big plot point in seasons 3 and 4 about the lack of a budget to cover the protection of state's witnesses (which I believe was a big point of Carcetti's campaign).
shareA witness is supposed to live under state protection. Living with a grandmother is not exactly that. He was making calls to the projects which nobody was aware of. If a witness who is under protection dies then the police are tried. The whole thing is more egregious because of his age.
Though, their limitations are understandable because of lack of funding and that he was maybe not under formal witness protection program. And that's why the decision to try to co-opt him is questionable.
The point was that he was placed somewhere safe, like any other protective custody and also like protective custody, I'm sure his grandmother was being paid to house and supervise him. The only difference is that they didn't change his name. Just like anyone else, it was his responsibility to cooperate and his choice to stay with the program or leave. Unfortunately Wallace decided to leave the program and got himself murdered.
I woke up this way...
Uhhh....
Wallace wasn't going to be a witness. He wasn't going to testify in court about anything. He was NOT under Protective Custody in any way, shape or form. He didn't witness any murders. He "knew" who killed Brandon, just like everyone else on the Westside knew, just like the cops all knew.
What Wallace did was he helped the Major Crimes Unit figure out the pattern of phone calls that they had on the Wire the night that Brandon was killed. And they didn't really care all that much about Brandon's murder, to be perfectly honest. It didn't hurt things, it could possibly be added to the list of charges they would eventually bring against Bell, Barksdale, and various members of their crew, but it was only circumstantial evidence without having a person who was there when Brandon was actually killed coming forth to testify, and Wallace could not have been that person. He wasn't there.
Wallace came back because he was bored at his Grandma's house. It's that simple. And he came back at exactly the wrong time, because Stringer was starting to get very paranoid, and he and Avon were taking people out left and right, sometimes without particularly good reasons to do so.
Wallace gave up what information he had willingly. He wanted to tell someone about it. Perfectly understandable, but also a dangerously stupid thing to do. It was a brilliant plot device, both with making us grieve over Wallace (and kind of grieve for Bodie and Poot, too, interestingly enough), and it was the thing that drove the final wedge between Avon and D'Angelo, it drives their prison storyline in Season 2.
Did you see how eagerly Wallace gave them the info on Brandon's murder? They figured that Wallace would be very beneficial to their investigation. Whether by being a witness or an informant, he could have helped them in the future.
I woke up this way...
You are misremembering, I just watched these episodes. Wallace was to testify at a grand jury that he saw Stringer in the car with the crew who killed Brandon, his phone call, conversation with Stringer, etc. He was at his grandmother's house because no department was willing to pay for protective custody; and it's never stated but apparently none of them wanted to take him home.
|Statistics show that 100% of people bitten by a snake were close to it.|
and it's never stated but apparently none of them wanted to take him home.