The Inspiration Behind Wee-Bey Brice
Roland “Wee-Bey” Brice, portrayed by actor Hassan Johnson, was the gang Barksdale Organization’s most trusted soldier on the show. He’s based on someone Ed Burns, the producer, writer, and co-creator of The Wire, was a former police detective and writer for the Baltimore Sun.
Among the high-end drug traffickers that Burns studied in the 1980s was a heroin dealer named Thomas H. Taylor whose partner, Vernon Collins, was known as Bey-Brother. He was known as a narcotics hitman who was feared throughout Baltim e, and was one of the most notorious contract killers in the 1970s. Bey-Brother was arrested like Wee-Bey, and sentenced to thirty-five years in prison.
