Central Park Five

              By 1989, many movements and actions had led to improved racial equality, both politically and socially. Still, however, the underlying racial prejudices that many held were prevalent, and the White population of America still largely held racist beliefs. This was seen during the events that unfolded one evening in Central Park, New York.
             That day, April 20th, 1989, an individual now known as the Central Park Jogger, Trisha Meili, was found unconscious, beaten and raped. The media was quick to report on the issue, and highlighted the grotesqueness of the beating, citing that she had lost 75% of her blood and had a severe skull fracture. This quickly ignited the populus, as many looked for people to blame and groups to target for the attack. Later on, the New York Daily News published a paper on the issue and made bold claims that a “wolfpack” of 30 teens that were assaulting other passerbyers had dragged the woman down a ravine and committed the crime.
             Of these thirty, five teens were charged for the crime, and eventually became known as the Central Park Five. These five included Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, and Korey Wise, all between the ages of 14 and 16.

             This sparked a major racist outcry, as individuals started calling the actions of the alleged attackers “wilding” and described them as “bloodthirsty, animals, savages”. Others cited segregational divisions and claimed that African Americans lived in inherently different worlds of “crack, welfare, guns, knives, indifference and ignorance” where the enemies were white people. This growing exaggeration and tightening of the issue ultimately led to a media tsunami, where facts became more and more warped in order to heighten the degree and supposed grotesqueness of the incident. In fact, even Donald Trump bought large newspaper ads that called to “Bring Back The Death Penalty. Bring Back Our Police!" 

         
             Regarding the actual arrest and trial, Kevin Richardson and Raymond Santana were first brought in on charges of unlawful assembly. Later, they were joined by McCray, Salaam, and Wise. For over 24 hours, despite the fact that DNA samples didn’t match any of the teens, police denied them food, sleep, or water and forced out confessions from the teens, claiming that they had done the crime. Salaam was later interviewed in 2016, far after the case, and claimed that he could hear Korey Wise being beaten, and officers threateningly told him that he would be next and that they needed confessions.
             During the trial, despite having recanted the confessions, all 5 were convicted of sexual assault, rape, and other crimes, serving between 6-13 months in jail. Surprisingly, in 2002, 13 years after the initial incident, Matias Reyes, an already convicted murderer and rapist confessed to the Central Park crime, which was confirmed through DNA tests. The following year, the Central Park 5 sued the city of New York for racial discrimination, emotional distress, and other charges, ultimately gaining $41 million.
             Despite all this, during the 2016 election, when Trump was asked about his actions of calling for the death penalty against the five, he still claimed that “You have people on both sides of that. They admitted their guilt,” suggesting that he still stands by his misdirected persecution against the Central Park 5, even now, despite their innocence.


https://www.history.com/topics/1980s/central-park-five
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/6/18/18684217/trump-central-park-5-netflix
https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-48609693