Season 1 mainly tells the story of the Baltimore City Police's investigation into the Barksdale drug cartel. The investigation was all started by Detective Jimmy McNulty. During the trial of DeAngela Barksdale, the key witness temporarily changed his testimony, allowing DeAngela to escape the crime. After the trial, McNulty revealed to Judge Daniel Phelan that the witness may have been threatened by the defendant's uncle, Ivan Barksdale's men, and was forced to change his words because he saw Ivan's deputy Stinger Bell and several other gang members at the trial. McNulty also told Judge Phelan that the Barksdale gang was suspected of large-scale drug trafficking and many unsolved murders, but no one investigated their crimes. Judge Phelan then complained to the police department's top brass, which embarrassed them, so they ordered the formation of a special task force to investigate Barksdale. However, the top brass did not really want to investigate the case, but just to perfunctory the judge. A game of chess was unfolding between the police officers who wanted to investigate the case and their superiors who were obstructing the investigation. The commander of the task force, Cedric Daniels, was caught in the middle and was caught between a rock and a hard place. At the same time, there were conflicts within the Barksdale gang. In addition, their fight with Omar Little, who made a living by robbing drug dealers, resulted in many casualties, which further attracted the attention of the police. During this period, D'Angela felt guilty about his criminal life and the impact it had on others. The police launched street arrests and hoped to get clues from street drug dealer Valens, but there was not much progress. Finally, the task force began to use electronic monitoring equipment to monitor the public phones and pagers used by gang members. However, the investigation entered the restricted area defined by the upper level, touching on issues such as political donations. [151][152] After a small leader under Ivan was arrested by another team of police, his superiors demanded that the case be closed. Detective Kima Gregos was injured in the operation, [149][150] which agitated other police officers and ended up alerting the gang members. The Barksdale gang suspected that they were under police investigation and began to eliminate all suspicious persons and abandoned pay phones and pagers. Valens was shot and killed by childhood friends Bodie and Putt at the behest of Stringer Bell. D'Angela was caught while moving a large amount of drugs for his uncle. When he learned of Valens' death, he decided to betray his uncle and Stringer. But his mother persuaded him to focus on the family business. In the end, the task force gave Ivan a lighter sentence, and his subordinate Webby Brace took the blame for most of the murder charges, some of which were not even committed by Webby. Stringer escaped prosecution and continued to run the Barksdale crime empire. Daniels and McNulty were transferred to the cold office for disobeying their superiors.