David Simon's Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets was published a year before Clockers - and the characters featured in that book provided the inspiration for many of those who later appeared in The Wire. Price's book may have been an influence, but I doubt it "inspired David Simon to create The Wire" as The Telegraph claim.

I can see a similarity between Clockers and the portrayal of corner dealing as seen in Series 1 of The Wire. But the dealers there don't have much more ambition than to sell more drugs. Its some years since I read it, but there isn't too much I recall about life on the police side and there is even less about political corruption.