New York City is known for its busy streets, iconic views and controversial events, such as the Eric Garner case, that catch attention across America.
On Feb. 23, Dr. Richard Newton, assistant professor of religious studies, showed the film “The Central Park Five” as part of the on-going Diversity Film Series at Elizabethtown College. The film series features movies that focus on controversial topics such as racism, gender inequality, politics and ethnic prejudices. The film showed by Newton first premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2012 and has since been featured on PBS and other television networks. The filmmakers Ken Burns, David McMahon and Sarah Burns took their cameras into the Big Apple to capture the heart of the story.
Filled with criminal activity from purse snatching to even murders, New York City in 1989 was not the tourist destination that it is today. According to the NY Daily News, the typical day in 1989 included reports of nine rapes, five murders, 255 robberies and 194 aggravated assaults. “New York in the late 1980s was a completely schizophrenic, divided city,” Jim Dwyer, of the “New York Times,” said in the documentary. The upper class and lower class split New York City into two divided cities, as Dwyer said. But what caused the event in April to capture the city’s attention was that it happened in Central Park. It spread the message that no area of New York City was safe.
As the film begins, a large group of teenage boys headed into the park to hang out. Some boys in the group committed crimes like the assault of a biker passing by or a homeless man sitting on a bench. But as soon as the police sirens were heard, the group dispersed, running away from the police coming to investigate. For five of the boys in the group, who later became known as the Central Park Five, their lives forever changed as they were caught and brought into the Central Park Precinct.
At first, the boys were held for the small criminal charges or “wilding,” like assaulting strangers in the park. But as the investigating police found the body of Trisha Meili in the woods of the Park that same night, the boys were immediately tied to the assault and rape of Meili. Antron McCray, Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson, Korey Wise and Yusef Salaam were all connected in this case by being at the wrong place at the wrong time. For hours, each boy sat through intimidating interviews where detectives and police attempted to force the teenage boys to admit to the crime.
As the film documents each of the now-grown men’s interpretation of the story, they eventually all got pressured to admit to being at the crime with promises from the police that they could go home. With four of the suspects confessing on videotape to being guilty, when the case hit court, all five of the boys were ruled as guilty by the jury. Despite their efforts to explain that they had been intimidated, lied to and coerced by the detectives to make false confessions, the boys were sentenced to five to 10 years in jail. Even with no DNA evidence at the scene, and no evidence that all five were even there to see the assault take place, their coerced confessions created enough evidence for them to be guilty. The case had taken over the media, focusing on these “wolf packs” of young black men causing terror within the streets and targeting the white women of New York. And there was nothing that would convince the public or police department that the five were innocent.
In 2002, years after their sentences, Matias Reyes, a convicted rapist and murderer from New York City, confessed to the assault of Trisha Meili in Central Park in 1989. With DNA evidence confirming his confession, the charges against all of the Central Park Five were dropped as they were finally proven innocent.
The case puts the spotlight on racism in the justice system and how there are still prejudices even in the places where there shouldn’t be. If the detectives looked past their convictions, then they would have been able to discover Reyes as the criminal from the start. As the film concluded, the story of the Central Park Five case shows that racism is still prevalent today and that changing the mindset of America to accept diversity is easier said than done.
