Review of The Central Park Five (2012) by Alejandro R — 01 May 2014

Brilliant documentary laying out a set of social injustices in 1989 New York City. I remember being roughly the same age as these 5 teenagers and in high school in Brooklyn when it happened. I recall my history teacher pulling out the newspaper and showing us the front page with the headshots of these kids and the term "wilding" appearing in large bold letters. I also remembered sitting next to a black classmate and both of us discussing how the kids were all black and Hispanic. This in a predominately black and Hispanic high school and I remember the awkwardly tense environment this popular case created in my school among the student body. The film even dealt with that in a very straight forward manner that I very much appreciated. That's an easy thing for people to want to shy away from and it takes some courage to admit it and bring it to light.

Another thing this film portrays is how the police and district attorneys regarded these kids as guilty from the beginning before it even reached the newspapers. Then they became guilty in the eyes of the media, which then landed the final blow by creating the same guilty conclusion in the minds of much of the public. "The Crime of the Century" it was called. And in the end of it all, it turns out they were actually innocent. So I guess it was the crime of the century---just not one perpetrated by these kids, but instead the one perpetrated by the system.

The original case received so much media attention in 1989 that I think it was impossible to not hear something about it and this was the days before the internet and easy 24-hour access to news. Meanwhile, when a black woman was raped and thrown off of a roof in Brooklyn on the same day, it got very little attention. The racial implications in this Central Park jogger case were very disturbing and well elucidated in the film.

Taking 5 14-16 year old kids and coercing them into giving false statements of guilt just to close a case under pressure. It sadly also resulted in the actual guilty person to roam free and commit more rapes while these innocent kids were being convicted.

This is an incredibly sad tale and I had been wanting to see this film since it first came out in theaters. It brought back a lot of memories. It is tragic indeed and not something that should be forgotten, but unfortunately their exoneration got very little attention so most people from the time I'm sure have no idea of how this all turned out. I didn't even know until I heard of this film, which was 23 years later.

The film is an important film for that reason. It is the greatest public statement of the injustice that was carried out in a number of different ways by different criminal justice departments of our system. Legendary documentarian Ken Burns and his daughter Sara, as well as her husband, did an excellent job of bringing the social/political implications and ramifications to light with both heart and a commitment to factual rigor.

This film really should be watch by many more people, especially those of us from this time period. I conveniently saw it on netflix.