The Central Park Five documents the wrongful conviction of five Black and Latino young men in New York City. In my opinion, the movie highlights the institutional failure of the NYPD and the Press.
The NYPD in its haste to calm people down and respond to the Mayor’s call to punish those responsible failed to investigate the crime in the right way. NYPD quickly selected these young men not because it believe that they had committed the crime but because these young men happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time; though there were nothing linking them to the crime. To them it was a slam dunk: a crime plus five vulnerable young men without the proper representation equals convictions.
All the while NYC mainstream press stood by without asking a single questions of the NYPD. No one was assigned to find out about these young men. The information from the press all came from what the NYPD had released about these young men. No investigation took place.
While watching the movie, all I could think about is how come no one person decided to speak to these young men. Also I felt that the failure of the press though not racial had a lot to do with access. maybe no one wanted to offend the Mayor’s office by printing something that the Mayor, in the movie, had publicly declared a test of the city.
I felt sad watching the movie with my two boys. I felt even sadder when when they could not comprehend why “cops would send innocent people to jail.”
/Luc
