Race, Ethnicity, Class, and Crime in the Media Fall 2020

The media source I chose to watch is “When They See Us” it is a 4 part series based on the true story of the central park jogger case ad the central park 5. This fits into the media post of  ethnicity , race , and crime because the five boys who was excused of the crime  had different ethnicity and race they was Latinos and African Americans. Also the lady that was assaulted was white women so in this case there is a ton of different races that goes into this crime. This was a really interesting mini series because it showed the true events of what happened that horrible night.  It shows that there was a lot of assaults happening that but one specially was terrible and it was a lady named Trisha Meili (born Patricia Meili)  she was raped and almost beat to death ny one guy but because of the number of high assaults in the park that night  by groups the police thought that it was it was a group of people that did it. So they picked out the five boys named Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana , and  Korey Wise. The police coerced them and beat them into false confessions.

https://www.netflix.com/title/80200549

This series does a great job of showing how the criminal justice system is crooked and how police is crooked. Its crazy how they can coerce and beat up teens into confessing into something they did not to and have to serve time for it. Also I think that it was implicit bias because they wanted five boys of different races to serve time for a rape and assault they did not commit. I also think this ties into implicit bias power point it said that police believes that African American men are violent and crime prone and that says a lot because in their head they don’t care about not evidence any thing to that nature we just want to get these five black kids in jail and geta bad name (implicit bias pp). After having their name speared in the dirt and being locked up for a good amount especially korey wise who was locked up in adult prison and had to deal with many assaults during his time in adult prison. A guy by the name of Matias Reyes saw Korey Wise in prison and confessed to murder and his DNA matched the  evidence that was on the  crime scene and Matias Reyes was a serial rapist at the time so it make sense. Even after all that The attorney who was responsible for putting the five boys in jail Linda Fairstein still said that the five boys was guilty even after Matias DNA matched with what he said. She even said the police investigation was brilliant so to me that goes with race and crime because she did not care about the facts she just care about getting five colored boys in jail and of the streets.  It got so bad that her book publisher dropped her after the making of when they us came out. Another prominent figure in the case is the president now Donald Trump he took a eight five thousand ad page saying they should bring back the death penalty for the central park five and even after they was set free just like Linda Fairstein he said he still thinks they was involved and that the police did a great job knowing they did not because they beat the kids.

At the end of the day this was a horrible case for the central park they had their names smeared and lost valuable years of their lives. Four of the kids moved from New York when they was released and the Five of them won a settlement case and got money from New York.

References

Week 6 -Implicit Bias (Sept. 28 – Oct 2)