WHEN THEY SEE US. (2019) A SUPERB TRUE CRIME DRAMA SERIES REVIEWED BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©
WHEN THEY
SEE US. (2019) A NETFLIX TRUE CRIME DRAMA SERIES WRITTEN, CREATED AND DIRECTED
BY AVA DUVERNAY.
STARRING
FELICITY HUFFMAN, VERA FARMIGA, FAMKE JANNSEN AND JOHN LEGUIZAMO.
REVIEW BY
SANDRA HARRIS. ©
This is a superb four-part true crime/drama mini-series, but
it’s the most harrowing thing I’ve ever seen on Netflix, and all the more
harrowing for its all being true, and the fact that the stuff that happens to the young boys in it
all actually happened. And, if it’s harrowing to watch, how much worse must it
be to have actually lived through all this horrible stuff. Let me tell you the
story.
On the night of April 19th, 1989 (can you remember
where you were and what you were doing in April of that year, just to put the
timeframe into context?), a young white woman, an investment banker called
Patricia Meili, went for a run late in the evening in New York’s famous Central
Park. Somewhere along the way, she was accosted, raped, beaten severely and
left for dead in a bush.
Five young black and Hispanic boys, aged between fourteen and
sixteen, were taken down to the police station- one of them hadn’t even been in
the park that night- and beaten up, terrorised and bullied by cops until they
each admitted to having had something to do with the rape, one of the most
publicised cases of its nature of all time.
Interrogated for hours without their parents or any lawyers
or appropriate adults being present, the petrified boys were tricked by police
into believing that they could go home to their families if they just signed
the confessions. The scenes of bullying and intimidation in the series are
horrible to watch. The knowledge that this only happened because the boys were
black and Hispanic and dirt-poor makes the whole thing even worse.
The boys were Kevin Richardson and Raymond Santana, both aged fourteen; Antron McCray and Yusef Salaam, both aged fifteen, and Korey Wise, aged sixteen. They were thrown into juvenile detention centres until the trial, with the exception of Korey, who, at sixteen, was deemed old enough to go to an adult holding facility.
Can you imagine being dumped in with adult male
criminals when you’re still just a terrified child?
Linda Fairstein was the white New York City prosecutor who
seemed to really, really want these five black/Hispanic boys to be convicted of
the crimes against the Central Park Jogger, as the victim became known. She is
played well but super-unsympathetically by Felicity Huffman, as a cold and
unprofessional prosecutor who tries to twist the facts to support her pet
theory, rather than fitting the available facts to the theory.
She later went on to write crime thrillers such as THE
DEAD HOUSE, THE BONE VAULT and ENTOMBED. I remember reading some of
her books in the mid-Noughties when I first started getting interested in true
crime and crime thrillers, but at that time I’d never even heard of the Central
Park Five or the Central Park Jogger Case. I was happy to see that this brilliant
Netflix series was the cause of Ms. Fairstein’s being dropped from her
publisher in 2019.
The five boys were all cleared of their convictions in 2002
when the real perpetrator, Matias Reyes, seemingly found religion and finally confessed
to the crimes that had put five innocent young boys behind bars for years.
Some of them had been released from prison by the time their
convictions were cleared, but had found it ridiculously hard to get a foothold
back in society because the whole system was geared towards, not rehabilitation
or helping the ‘ex-con,’ but in ensuring that things are so tough for them that,
sooner or later, they have no choice but to break the law and end up ‘back inside.’
Their names are mud, they’re branded as violent sex offenders
for life, thanks in no small part to property mogul Donald Trump, who took out ads
worth $85,000 in the New York press calling for the reinstatement of the death
penalty for criminals like the Central Park Five. It’s a good thing this didn’t
happen, as five totally innocent men might have had their lives snuffed out for
something they definitely didn’t do. ‘He wants to kill my son,’ says one
of the boys’ mothers in the show, her blood running cold.
Korey Wise’s story is the most heart-breaking of all the five
stories. He wasn’t even in the park the night of April 19th. He just
goes down to the police station with the others when the cops, busily rounding up a few 'likely suspects,' encourage him to
come along and ‘support his buddy.’
Next thing he knows, the best years of his life are stolen
from him and he’s doing time in prisons like Rikers Island and Attica
Correctional Facility, having the living daylights beaten out of him by other inmates because he’s
one of the Central Park Five, five of the most notorious ‘criminals’ in the
prison system.
His impoverished single mum can’t come and visit him as often
as either of them would like because the travel costs would be too high. It’s
just so sad. His prison existence is so wretched it’s a miracle he ever comes
through it with his soft heart and gentle nature intact.
The five men are eventually given financial compensation for
their years spent in prison after being wrongfully convicted, but no amount of
money could ever compensate them for their lost youth and the emotional stress
and physical hardships they and their families endured.
No doubt there were those, the 'no smoke without fire' brigade, who said that, well, even if they didn’t rape and batter the Central Park Jogger, they were up to no good in the park at that time of night, ‘running with gangs’ and attacking innocent park-users in a process known as ‘wilding,’ or running wild through the iconic park. ‘Wilding’ was a problem that New York City was having at that time, but there’s no evidence that the five accused boys were engaging in it on the night of question.
The
actors playing the five boys, both young and older, all do a phenomenal job here.
They do the real five lads proud. Their portrayal of the five boys/men is just
so electrifying. You want to watch a series about police corruption and some
of the worst kind of damage racism and bigotry can cause? This is the one. It’s
explosive. I hope it makes you guys as angry as it makes me.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
Her debut romantic fiction novel, 'THIRTEEN
STOPS,' is out now from Poolbeg Books:
https://www.amazon.com/Thirteen-Stops-Sandra-Harris-ebook/dp/B089DJMH64
The sequel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS LATER,’ is
out now from Poolbeg Books:
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