Trump Central Park Five "If They're Guilty" Media Framing Supercut

of course I hate these people and let's all hate these people because maybe hate is what we need if we're going to get something done found a female she was still alive in fact still isn't I am strongly in favor of the death penalty I'm saying if they're found guilty if the woman died which she hopefully will not be dying but if the woman died I think they should be executed [Music] [Music] one of the most talked about television shows right now is the Netflix four-part series when they see us it tells the story of the so-called Central Park 5 the five New York City youths ages 14 to 16 who were convicted of rape after an April 19 1989 attack in Central Park their convictions were all vacated after a serial rapist named Matas Reyes confessed in 2002 to the rape of the Central Park jogger and said he acted alone the five are all black or Hispanic the 29-year-old victim was white the crime was a national sensation further dramatized When Donald Trump then a well-known real estate developer in New York paid for a full- page ad in multiple newspapers including the New York Times advocating the return of the death penalty in 2014 the administration of Mayor Bill DeBlasio settled a lawsuit brought by the five for 41 million but the city admitted no wrongdoing on the part of the investigators in the sympathetic Netflix telling directed by Ava duver each of the five is shown confessing only after being coerced by overzealous cops and prosecutors singled out for particular scorn is Linda fairstein then a supervisor of the prosecution team fairstein wrote In The Wall Street Journal this week that the Netflix series is quote so full of distortions and falsehoods as to be an outright fabrication last week fairstein who has a second career as a best-selling author of crime fiction resigned her position as a board member at Vasser College her alma mater and this week Elizabeth letterer the trial prosecutor of the five resigned from a teaching role at the Columbia Law School amid protests from the Black Law Students Association in an interview that aired Wednesday night night with both the five and the actors who play them in TV in the TV series Oprah implored everybody to now refer to them as the exonerated five not the Central Park five but is it that simple joining me now is Eric Reynolds a former New York City police officer who on the night of the attack arrested two of the five Eric thanks for being here you watched the Netflix series and you thought what well thank you for having me Michael um I watched a Netflix series and I was shocked okay I actually laughed out loud when I saw the uh Felicity Huffman playing Linda fairstein uh implore the police to go out and round up all black men in Harlem I thought that was absolutely Preposterous um it never happened Linda fairstein was never even in the precinct that day when the when the investigation was started first of all second of all the district attorney does not give orders to the police department they do not direct our investigations our investigation was well underway once Linda fairstein arrived at the Central Park Precinct someone who knows only of this case what they watched in that four-part series would come away thinking that the admissions the videotaped admissions were all coerced that this was all a result of cops who were acting in a in a a nefarious way to Railroad those five individuals as one of the police officers who made critical arrests in this case you would respond how oh that's ridiculous all you need to do is look at the videos watch the videos look at each one of the defendants see if they're being coerced see if they're sleep deprived see you'll see their parents are in every single video you will see in every single video their rights are being read to them it's it's a it's a blatant lie it's unfortunate this is the first time that police misconduct has been recorded on videotape and the people who alleged to have been you know their rights violated by the police didn't want it seen they fought for the longest time to keep those videos Under Wraps I would implore everybody look at the videos watch them from beginning to end and then make a judgment I know I know from doing a lengthy interview with you on my radio program that you were in the park that night that you participated in apprehending a number of the guys who it was their word correct me if I'm wrong we Wilding yes but you initially didn't associate them with the violent attack on the jogger what was the moment that caused you to say I think there is a connection well it wasn't that I think that there was a connection we knew there was a connection we had arrested five um two of which were part of the Central Park 5 Raymond Santana and Kevin Richardson we were going to release them we were releasing them to their parents we did not believe that they had anything to do with the attack on the jogger okay but we were interviewing them before we released them so that in just in the in the um event that they saw what happened we might be able to get that information I released two of them we got to Kevin Richardson Kevin Richardson had a scratch on his face when we asked him how he got the scratch he first lied and said that my partner did it uh when confronted you know with the fact that we were going to go ask my partner he then admitted that the female jogger scratched his face that's the first we realized that they were involved with the attack on the on Patricia meley and had you had conversation with him had you had any conversation with him up until that moment where there was any reference to the jogger no no well there why would go ahead finish there was one reference by Raymond Santana um my partner had asked them you know why were you out in the park you know why would you be out in the park beating people up you should be with your girlfriends uh Raymond Santana looked to Steven Lopez and laughingly said well I already got mine I didn't realize what it meant at the time because the jogger had not been found at that point why would matus Reyes have confessed to doing it and doing it alone if that were not the case because Matas Reyes was in a segregated part of the uh prison he was with uh rapist and child molesters he had gotten kicked out because of his you know because he had committed several violations in there now he was out in general population and vulnerable to attack Carrie Weiss knew this he had people threatening Reyes and telling him that he had better say that he did it by himself and it really didn't matter at that point because the statute of limitations were up he had no there was no legal Jeopardy for him to say that he had done it in fact what happened was you know as a as a psychopath and I got this from his psychologist this worked in his favor he was able to get attention as a result of coming forward to say that he did it by himself he was looked at as a hero almost in a perverse way um well why why was his why Eric was only his DNA found in the jogger his DNA only was found in the jogger because well first of all if you look at the videos every one of the kids said the same thing they were not able to perform sexually on the jogger and they pretended to have sex with them because they did not want to look like a punk in front of the rest and if you think about it you have a bunch of 13 and 14 year olds in the middle of Central Park in the middle of the night beating the life out of this woman that they don't know and under those circumstance would they be able to perform sexually no who could perform sexually the guy who raped mother the guy who was a serial rapist the guy who raped tortured and killed a pregnant woman in front of her two children that's the guy who is able to have sex and to complete the act in the middle of Central Park in front of everybody let me return to a final question that the subject of whether those admissions captured on videotape were coerced you weren't in those rooms correct so how could you know how can I know that weren't coerced you can yes well first of all you can hear everything that's going on okay it's not as though the rooms are soundproof number one number two if you look at the pictures if you watch the Netflix series you'll see how each kid is getting slapped around they're getting beaten up at one point a cop uh hits a kid in the face with a a helmet several times now every news organization in the nation was at the precincts when they were being brought out if you look at those pictures not one of them has a scratch on them none of them you can see sh the mug shots I'm showing the five mug shots right now uh to to make the point that I think you're you're offering Eric reyolds thank you for being here it's a complicated case and certainly not as clear as the television adaptation that's what I would say you're correct you're 100% correct