OPINION
At this point, a ‘Netflix documentary’ is to be taken as seriously as Erich von Daniken writing a manual on quantum physics. One of the worst offenders is When They See Us, a series ‘based’ on the case of the Central Park Five. A series so wildly fanciful that not even Netflix tried to pass it off as a documentary, but a “crime drama television miniseries”. The veracity of its ‘based on’ can be judged that a lawsuit was only dismissed because the judge, an Obama appointee, ruled that “the First Amendment protects non-factual assertions”.
This being a truly ‘post-truth’ world, the “non-factual assertions” of When They See Us have been so wildly successful in convincing Democrats to elect one of its subjects to New York City Council. As James Howard Kunstler recently wrote, “the Democratic Party, has gone so insane that it now devotes itself fanatically to the utter destruction of what remains of our country”.
To refresh your memories, the Central Park Five case concerned the brutal rape and assault of (white) jogger Trisha Meili by a mob of (black and brown) teenagers. Capping off a standard evening of mayhem that included attacks, assault, and robberies, including beating male joggers so badly they looked like they were “dunked in a bucket of blood”.
Then the mob swarmed Trisha Meili.
Meili was knocked down while jogging, dragged into the bushes and sexually and physically assaulted: “she looked like she was tortured”. Four hours later, she was found naked, gagged, tied and covered in mud and blood in a shallow ravine. She was so badly injured that she was in a coma for 12 days. She lost 75-80 per cent of her blood. She had severe brain damage, severe hemorrhagic shock, and her skull had been fractured so badly that her left eye was dislodged from its socket, which in turn was fractured in 21 places.
Now, one of the accused, Yusef Salaam, has been elected to New York Council. For the Democrats, naturally.
The essence of the leftist mythology of They Din Do Nuffin was parroted by (of course) the New York Times.
“The confessions of Mr Salaam and the four others who were convicted alongside him were coerced. There was no DNA evidence tying the teenagers – Mr Salaam, Korey Wise, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana and Antron McCray – to the brutal attack. Mr Trump’s racist rantings only inflamed [racial] tensions.”
As Ann Coulter says, two of those claims are laughably false and the third is utterly meaningless.
It’s a sleight of hand to say that there was “no DNA evidence” tying The Five to the crime. Yeah, that’s probably because in 1989, no one would have been looking for DNA.
Back then, DNA testing was a novel scientific technique. It required much larger samples than are necessary today, and the sample couldn’t be contaminated and the tests weren’t reliable.You might as well complain that the police didn’t use cellphone tracking, either.
But there was plenty of other evidence.
– When Santana was being driven to the precinct house for general mayhem, he blurted out: “I had nothing to do with the rape. All I did was feel the woman’s tits.”
At this point, the jogger’s body hadn’t been found yet. The police knew nothing about any rape.
– Another boy, picked up with Richardson, told the police that he knew who did “the murder,” naming McCray. Richardson concurred, saying, “Yeah. That’s who did it.”
Again, the police were unaware of any rape or murder.
The next morning, Richardson pointed to the 102nd Street transverse, telling officers, “This is where we got her.”
– Dennis Commedo, part of the larger group wilding that night, told the police that, when he ran into Richardson, he had said, “We just raped somebody.”
– Two of Wise’s friends said that the next day, he told them, “You heard about that woman that was beat up and raped in the park last night? That was us!”
– Another boy arrested for some of the other attacks, but not the rape, told detectives (on videotape) that he overheard Santana and a friend laughing about how they’d “made a woman bleed.”
But they din du nuffin.
As for New York’s esteemed new councilman: Orlando Escobar told police he saw Salaam leaving the site of the rape. Bloodstains were found on his jacket. He confessed to the rape after detectives said fingerprints had been found on clothing
Why would he do that – unless he knew the prints might be his?
Four of The Five gave videotaped confessions, at least three of them in the presence of parents or guardians. Defense attorneys spent weeks attacking the confessions as “coerced,” but two multicultural juries and the trial judge concluded that the confessions were voluntary. Taking the other side is some bimbo with a Netflix documentary, on the basis of no evidence whatsoever.
Moreover, recall that when The Five confessed, no one knew whether the jogger would emerge from her coma and be able to identify her attackers.
Eventually, the crime was pinned on a psychopathic killer whose “confession” came with no additional punishment.
[Matias Reyes] not only faced no additional punishment for his “confession,” but he was rewarded with a favorable prison transfer. But his word is the sole fact on which the “exoneration” of The Five rests. The police were prohibited from interviewing Reyes. He was not given a polygraph. There was no hearing to determine his credibility. His own lawyer described Reyes as a “psychopath who cannot separate fact from fancy.” (He said, for example, that the jogger got up and ran away after he savagely raped her.)
Ann Coulter
Even so:
It was always known that there were other rapists. Thus, in her summation to the jury, prosecutor Elizabeth Lederer said: “Others, who were not caught, raped her and got away.”
But they din du nuffin, they wuz good boys.
Certainly, Democrat representative material.