Summary Of The Central Park Five

In 2012 Ken Burns produced The Central Park Five which narrates the experiences of five teenage boys who were wrongly convicted of the violent rape of a young woman in New York City’s Central Park in April of 1989. Burns builds his thesis, through interviews with various individuals such as former Mayor Koch, journalists from the 80’s and 90’s, historians, defense lawyers, Juror #3, and, of course, the five boys, now men, wrongly imprisoned. He believes that even with the new information which vacated the convictions of these men, New York City as a society has failed to authentically assess the situation and the systemic sin of racism which led to the misuse of justice.

Burns begins by illuminating the strains placed on New York City in the

Upon the discovery of Trisha Meili, a twenty-eight year old investment banker from the Upper East Side, badly beaten, raped, yet still alive, the Police begin their witch hunt. The NYPD and detectives use excessive tactics on the five teens to procure false confessions with force-fed details. The District Attorney’s Office continues the hunt to a point of absurdity as they ignore factual evidence, such as unmatched DNA and inconsistent timelines, continuing to prosecute the five boys. The third direct culprit to the systemic racism is the media as it continuously enflames the situation with racist rhetoric and bridges the gap in New York Citizen’s understanding of the crime in an immoral way. The people of New York, and perhaps even of the country, are not innocent either. Sprinkled throughout the documentary are signs that society still suffers from racism, although it is now in a cloaked form. If systemic racism was not alive and well in the community, then the people would have been able to see the unethical behavior and hold the individuals accountable for their

The NYPD is perhaps the most difficult to understand the source of their irrational actions toward the five teenage boys who are a mere 14 and 16 years old. The police officers and the detectives come from various cultural backgrounds: Caucasian, Latino, Black, etc. At first glance, it could be argued that the NYPD is simply overwhelmed by the Crack Wars and the increase in crime which coincided. Offered as almost a natural conclusion by the various interview comments, the officers immediately associate Ms. Meili’s attack with the group of over twenty-five teenagers, some of whom were causing various smaller crimes elsewhere, in Central Park that night. It is quite clear that these men cannot conceive of any other perpetrators, and thus begins a series of unethically long and abusive interrogations of these five boys. These are the five that succumb to the stress and construct false confessions implicating themselves in various actions surrounding the brutal crime with the help of a few details from the detectives. Their next failure is the evidence itself. The detectives fail to match and forensic evidence with the boys, i.e. no DNA matched the semen found on Ms. Meili, no trace of the crime scene on the boys, and misaligned timelines from where the teenagers were in the park and where Ms. Meili would have been on her jog. To add insult