Central Park Five Analysis

Jamie Turner

1/21/14

         Central Park Five Analysis

The Central Park Five wouldn’t have been an impact on our society if it weren’t for the media’s biased opinions and corruption.

The Central Park Five is the story of five teenaged boys, all of whom are either latino or black who were falsely accused for the rape of a woman jogging in Central Park.  This meant that five innocent boys were robbed of their childhoods while a rapist remains on the streets.  That really annoys me.  I watched a documentary called “The Central Park Five” to get more information on this investigation.  Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, and Kharey Wise, and Yusef Salaam were the five boys charged of the rape and assault of Trisha Meili who was referred to as “The Central Park Jogger” until the release of her book called “I Am The Central Park Jogger.”

It all started as a normal night.  These five youths didn’t really know each other too close before this.  A group of about twenty five kids were going to hang out at the park.  As the night went along kids in this group were getting into some trouble like harassing a couple on a tandem bike, assaulting a homeless man, and throwing objects at passing cars.  The cops came after word got out about this mischief and even though these five kids weren’t taking part in these acts they were still brought in to the Central Park Precinct.  Later that night a bloodied and abused woman was found on the side of a jogging trail.  These five boys were kept a little longer for investigation.  All of which were hispanic or black.  Despite the lack of evidence these boys were forced to confess to the crime on tape.  They were all tried and sent to prison until years later when the real rapist confessed to the crime.  The boys turned into men were free, but no they never really got the justice they deserved.

One thing the documentary talked about is that the media focuses on black on white crime more than any same race crimes.  Around the same time this is happening there was a white man who raped and killed a white woman but that never made it to the news or the daily paper.  If my biases decided which crimes were and weren’t publicized then I’d have to say I wouldn’t focus on a specific crime.  In my opinion any crime is a crime no matter what ethnicity you are.  I also think that it isn’t good to talk about specific crimes because nowadays too many things happen in a single day for us to keep track.  I’d at most put the crime or crimes that impact the community at a large on the news or in the paper because that will catch the eye of more people because it’ll affect more readers.

Something that really bothered me with this story is that there was no research done on any of the evidence.  When all was said and done with the young men someone made a timeline of what happened that night, when it happened, and where.  The string of mischief the Central Park Five boys were involved with occured on a totally different part of the park than the rape of Trisha Meili.  Why couldn’t they have looked at that before?  They did a DNA test on the kids but the DNA didn’t even match up so how on Earth are they still guilty?  I have a feeling the detectives on the case probably thought “Group of black and latino kids?  It has to be them even though they had no idea any of this happened.”  If the detective thought the way I think then Those boys would’ve just gave me contact information and I would have expanded on the case a little more before I drew a conclusion to whom it was.

The corruption in the Central Park five case is astonishing.  How can the authorities get away with making these kids read a scripted confession to a crime they were unaware even occurred?  How did they get away with this after it was revealed it wasn’t even them?  I’m not sure what that would be called but I’m pretty sure it is some type of felony.  That is definitely my biggest problem with this case.  If I were a lawyer defending one of the five innocent kids in this case I’d do whatever it takes to reveal the corruption in this case and get my client the peace he deserves.  

What happened to the Central Park Five was really horrible but I think people got carried away from the real problem.  A woman was brutally raped while she was just going for a jog.  In my opinion the victim should be the media’s first priority.  This woman was basically left for dead and was in critical condition at the hospital.  I know at some point  I heard someone say that Meili thought she was in the year 1952 when it was actually 1989.  That is some serious damage to a person!  Our society needs to do something to calm crime down.  What is the point of just murdering someone?  How could a human being think that is fun?  I think this country needs to do put more money into Mental Health care rather than building new sports arenas and malls.  I’d rather have a safe environment than have nice stuff, because then if people are more mentally stable they can contribute to the growth of our community.