17. The Real Jay Landsman
Jay Landsman (Delaney Williams) is the heavily overweight supervisory detective sergeant in charge of the homicide division. A largely comic character, he is based principally upon a real detective of the same name and utters phrases that David Simon recalls him utilising regularly. While almost everyone in The Wire is based upon a real person, Landsman stands out because the REAL Jay Landsman appears later in the show as Dennis Mello, a key lieutenant to first Bunny Colvin (Robert Wisdom), then Cedric Daniels (Lance Reddick). This is an excellent example of the way that Simon tried to make the Baltimore of The Wire as close to the real Baltimore as possible.