Howard "Bunny" Colvin

Howard Colvin
First appearance	"Stray Rounds" (episode 2.09)
Last appearance	"Late Editions" (episode 5.09)
Created by	David Simon
Portrayed by	Robert Wisdom
Information
Aliases	Bunny
Gender	Male
Occupation	Retired; former commander of the Western District in Baltimore Police department; also worked as head of hotel security, and as an Academic aide in University of Maryland's Social Sciences research department
Title	Lieutenant, demoted from major
Spouse(s)	Lolita (wife)
Children	Two unnamed, Namond Brice (adopted)

Howard "Bunny" Colvin is a fictional character on the HBO drama The Wire, played by actor Robert Wisdom. Colvin is a wise and able major in the Western District, alienated from the Baltimore Police Department and political system's concern with criminal statistics and career-climbing, to the consistent detriment of substantive case-work and the over-preoccupation with crude 'rip and run' tactics, petty drug charges on low-level players. He often expresses nostalgia for policing in earlier decades, particularly for the way in which officers amiably integrated into and supported communities; something he holds in sharp distinction with the contemporary "War on Drugs", in which neighborhoods are treated like 'occupied territory'. Close to retirement, he secretly breaks chain-of-command and reassigns his resources to create 'Hamsterdam', three zones within his district where drug dealing is pressured to non-violently conglomerate in exchange for informal legal sanction. Colvin also concentrates policing in these areas and attracts important ground-level social services, such as needle and condom distribution. Despite unprecedented statistical gains, Colvin meets reprimand, demotion (and thus lowered pension) and retirement, later to become a field researcher alongside academic Dr. David Parenti in Baltimore city schools. In this role, Colvin falls into the guardianship of Namond Brice.

Colvin joined the Baltimore Police Department around 1973 (according to Season 3, he had 30 years on) patrolling his home neighborhood in the Western District; one of his early posts was at Pensey and Fremont. Over his tenure, he advanced to the rank of District Commander (Major) in the Western District. Colvin's philosophy of policing involves protecting the community he serves by making quality arrests through the use of trusted informants on his foot post. As a commander he insists that his men learn their sense of direction, their foot post, and urged them to focus on doing real police work. Toward the end of his career, he began seeing the war on drugs as an ineffective waste of time and resources in his district that brought about too many unnecessary deaths.

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Wikipedia