The Central Park Five Summary

Jumping back into the past, Gregory Orr tells the incident when he and a group of five hundred of men, women, teenagers, and old folks assemble in Jackson, Mississippi. In Jackson for a peaceful demonstration, Gregory Orr and the rest of the group were arrested and taken away “to the county fairgrounds” (128, 1). Where they was beaten by officers of the law, Orr stated, “I emerged into the outdoors and the bright sunlight and saw them-two lines of about fifteen highway patrolmen on either side. I was ordered to walk, not run, between them. Again I was beaten with nightsticks, but this time more thoroughly, as I was the only target” (129, 2). Once freed from his captors, Gregory Orr gets in his car to head back north, but on his way back he was pulled over by flashing lights. Thinking it was the police; Gregory Orr pulled over and was approached by two white men. One of the white men said, “Get out, you son of a bitch, or I’ll blow your head off” (133, 3). The two white men takes Gregory Orr’s wallet and tell him to follow them, Scared for his life, Gregory Orr did exactly what the two men told him to do. After following the two men, Gregory Orr is back in jail in Hayneville. “Already depressed and disoriented by the ten days in jail in Jackson, I was even more frightened in Hayneville,” (136, 1) stated by Gregory Orr.

In the article “The Prisoner” by Skip Hollandsworth tells the life story of Edwin Debrow, a young boy who grows up in the streets and fell into an out of control spiral when he joined the neighborhood gang. Edwin Debrow will go on to kill a taxi driver at the age of 12 and would now spend most of his life in jail. The author who has done numerous stories about kids and their tragic life has now focused on the case of Edwin

One thing that struck me while watching this documentar,y was the way that the New York media sought out the information and relayed it back to the public. They created a humungous turmoil against the five teenage boys, who they claimed were out “wilding” running in a “wolf pack” after their “predators”. Mayor Koch stated, “this will be a test of the system”, regarding for the death penalty. The public wanted to see how the system would handle such barbaric acts and whether or not they will give them the death penalty for such “crimes”. Even multi-millionaire Donald Trump wrote a full-page ad in the frontlines, with the headline, “Bring Back the Death Penalty, Bring Back Our Police.” This sparked my attention as to what pandemonium was going on in the city during that time. The amount of discrimination and social tension between classes frustrated me, as I thought, well did the system go under a Due Process

Crime, deviance, and unethical conduct can found within almost every occupation and profession. Police ethics is the conduct that everyone is most concerned with. Police officers enter into an occupation that shares many characteristics of other career fields, but it also has unique responsibilities that deal with conduct and behavior. The PBS documentary: The Central Park Five, demonstrates two of the most common misconduct issues that the criminal justice professionals deal with noble cause and noble cause corruption. The film investigates the miscarriage of justice of four Black and one Latino teenager from Harlem, who were wrongly convicted of the brutal beating and rape of a white woman in New York City's Central Park.

I commence with this anecdote for several reasons one of which is to humbly acknowledge my unique, and privileged position as a Black female scholar in the midst of a war waged against Black bodies. Another reason is to recognize police brutality as a national endemic that plagues Black communities, unveiling remnants of anti-Black racism that legitimately suppresses the lives of Blacks in America . The non-indictments in each case concerning the sanctioned murder of Black youths evoke a

African American males are overrepresented in the criminal justice and many times are subject to harsher sentences than their Caucasian counterparts. African American males also experience racial profiling and have more negative interactions than any other population in the United States. Ibie, Obie, and Obiyan states, “African Americans have continued to be the repository for American crime and to be treated as amalgamation of presumed group trait rather than as individuals”. This topic is important because African American adolescents are less likely to be referred to rehabilitation or diversion programs and more likely to be sent to juvenile and/or prison. History has not been kind to African Americans and the injustices experienced by African Americans in the criminal justice system is extremely high. According to Weatherspoon, “The Supreme Court condoned and perpetuated many of the present day stereotypical biases concerning African Americans in the landmark decision of Dred Scott v. Sanford”. Over that past few years, with the advent of social media, the world is becoming more aware of the injustices and brutality suffered by African American males in the justice system. Many view this as a new phenomenon, but others know this abuse has always occurred, it is just now there are cameras taping the violence. Many people are waking up to what is occurring, but there are many others who are denial and who refuse to acknowledge the oppression and racism

Men and women alike are often afraid to venture out into the streets at the dark hours of the day. It could be argued that this is a byproduct of the ever-increasing US crime rate, yet it may also be due to the natural fear that accompanies walking alone in public spaces, familiar or not. Although any shifty figures lurking on the sidewalk can be the source of this fear, it is no doubt that the gross misrepresentation of black people as perpetrators of violent crimes has given them “the ability to alter public space in ugly ways,” as so proficiently stated in “Black Men and Public Space” by Brent Staples (205). Through this short essay, Staples uses a variety of rhetorical devices, namely anecdotes, in order to present the fact that these preconceived racial notions can make certain individuals increasingly susceptible to societal scrutiny. This forces many individuals to make concentrated efforts to present themselves as less threatening because “where fear and weapons meet -- [as] they often do in urban America -- there is always the possibility of death” (206).

Tr.:29. One police officer used a hand sign to signal he wished to speak. Tr.:29. He told the group that the police department ordered the officers to remove the occupiers from the park for violating the ordinance. Tr.:29. The officer continued, letting the occupiers know that what they were doing was important and that the police officers recognized that they fell into the group of society that the occupiers represented, or the 99 percent. Tr.:29. The officer then thanked the occupiers for their recent cooperation, but asked them to leave and told them that citations would be issued if they did not leave. Tr.:29. He informed the occupiers that if they remained after a citation was issued to them for not obeying the ordinance, the police would arrest them and charge them with misdemeanor trespass. Tr.:29. The defendants in this case represent the group of individuals who were either cited or charged after refusing to leave the park.

Racial inequality is a multidimensional problem in America. If the problem was simply minorities in America are less well off than their white counterparts, the problem could have been solved long ago. This narrative isn’t about racial inequality, its root causes, or its solutions; yet racial inequality plays a central role in that night’s events to the point where it should be mentioned. Racial inequality is a generational, economic, social, psychological, and every other facet of society people can analyze, type of problem. Northern Philadelphia is a prime example of racial inequality at its worst in America. Entire swaths of blocks consumed by poverty, drugs, and gang warfare are common in the streets of the predominately black and hispanic North Philadelphia. The heavy police presence on some blocks

In August of 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri, an 18-year-old African American boy by the name of Michael Brown, was shot and killed by an on-duty police officer during the investigation of an alleged, strong-arm robbery (Clarke & Lefte, 2014). The incident ignited protests and violent riots that continued for several weeks throughout the United States. Similar high profile deaths of Eric Garner in New York City, Tamir Rice in Cleveland, and Freddy Gray in Baltimore, have resulted in mass protests against law enforcement. For many, a deep divide was forged in the relations between law enforcement and the public; trust was lost on both sides. “Normally, official accounts of police fatally shooting black teenagers rest largely on the words of

The professors use hard hitting facts that demonstrates the truth behind African Americans and the way the law enforcement perceives them, giving the reader some distinctive insight. The history of the law enforcement along with the criminal justice system has portrayed that they are disproportionality race-based. Blacks are more likely than whites to be racially profiled (Staples 2011), to be stopped by law enforcement, and receive harsher sentences. Unfortunately, it has been shown time and time again that judges, jurors, and the law enforcement finds it challenging for them to sympathize with African Americans. All in all this body of academic work has highlighted external factors that have shaped the lives of Blacks in America without giving due attention to the words of Rodney King, the man who became the face of racial injustice (Chaney and Robertson 2014). Four themes were unveiled in the analysis King’s quotes: appreciation for the struggles of former Civil Rights Activists, appreciation for the legal system, personal feelings related to police brutality, and the desire for non-violence as a catalyst for positive

Many people in the United States have either experienced or witnessed some form of discrimination in their lifetimes, and one person, in particular, was Brent Staples, an African-American man who lived in New York during the mid-1970’s, which was not too long after the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s. Racial tensions in the United States were still considerably high back then, and this led to racism and discrimination towards others based on their social statuses such as race, class, and gender, and Staples himself has dealt with this issue numerous times in the past, which inspired him to write and to share his own thoughts and experiences about this controversial topic. He believed that even though black men were statistically more likely to get convicted of crimes than any other racial or minority group, it didn’t mean that all black men were violent criminals. He chose to format his writing into a personal essay for his story to have a more personal tone to it that anyone who reads it can easily relate to. The purpose of this text was to raise public awareness of the unfair discrimination in a society that Staples, along with many others, had encountered time and time again. It was written for both the general public and anyone who has also experienced discrimination to use as motivation to try to better themselves and make people realize that not all of them fit the stereotypes that society has set towards certain minority groups. In his text, Just Walk on By, Brent

The documentary we had to watch for this week’s discussion called “The Central Park Five” directed by Ken Burns was eye-opening. The movie was about five black and Latino teenagers aged 14 to 16 of being falsely convicted of attacking and raping a 28-year-old white woman in the central park, New York in 1989.

Last year, documentary filmmaker Ken Burns released "The Central Park Five", a movie he made with his daughter, Sarah Burns about the false convictions obtained in a 1989 rape

"I spread the map out on the dining room table, and I held down the corners with cans of V8. The dots from where I'd found things looked like the stars in the universe. I connected them, like an astrologer, and if you squinted your eyes like a Chinese person, it kind of looked like the word 'fragile.' Fragile. What was fragile? Was Central Park fragile? Was nature fragile? Were the things I found fragile? A thumbtack isn't fragile. Is a bent spoon fragile? I erased, and connected the dots in a different way, to make 'door.' Fragile? Door? Then I thought of porte, which is French for door, obviously. I erased and connected the dots to make 'porte.' I had the revelation that I could connect the dots to make 'cyborg,' and 'platypus,' and 'boobs,'