An actress acclaimed for her work in a gritty HBO series has been arrested in a drug raid, reports the Los Angeles ShowTracker blog.

Felicia Pearson, who portrayed the ruthless drug assassin Snoop in HBO’s "The Wire", was arrested Thursday in Baltimore during a drug raid, the article says.

Pearson’s portrayal of Snoop was widely praised, with critics saying the androgynous character who killed without remorse was one of the most intriguing characters on TV, the article adds.

David Simon, the creator of "The Wire," issued a statement on Slate , saying that Pearson should be given the presumption of innocence and that a previous, recent drug arrested was found to be unwarranted and that charges were dropped.

Simon added that Pearson’s good fortune from "The Wire" "seems, in retrospect, limited to that project. "She worked hard as an actor and was entirely professional, but the entertainment industry as a whole does not offer a great many roles for those who can portray people from the other America. There are, in fact, relatively few stories told about the other America."

Simon also added, "In an essay published two years ago in Time magazine, the writers of The Wire made the argument that we believe the war on drugs has devolved into a war on the underclass, that in places like West and East Baltimore, where the drug economy is now the only factory still hiring and where the educational system is so crippled that the vast majority of children are trained only for the corners, a legal campaign to imprison our most vulnerable and damaged citizens is little more than amoral."