According to documentarian Ken Burns, New York City Mayor-Elect Bill de Blasio plans on settling the “Central Park Five” civil suit once and for all.
During a video chat with the Huffington Post on Tuesday, Burns said that he had gotten special word from the soon-to-be mayor that that the civil suit filed the men would soon come to a conclusion.
“Bill de Blasio, the mayor-elect, has agreed to settle this case,” Burns told the Huffington Post on Tuesday. “And though this is justice delayed way too long and that is justice denied, [they] will not only be exonerated. But they will have justice, they will see some closure, they will be able to be made whole.”
“I am feeling great; it seems like we can see the light at the end of the tunnel,” Yusef Abdus Salaam, one of the Central Park Five, told the AmNews.“But we have seen that light before, and it was [an] oncoming train coming to mow us down. But now I think this is wonderful because this process seems to be coming to an end.”
“I have expectations that Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio and his administration will do what is right here in terms of crating the fertile climate for properly settling this lawsuit,” Central Park Five co-counsel Michael Tarif Warren told the AmNews.“It is a question of what must be done from a moral standpoint, where these young men, from being young boys, had their childhood snatched away from them as a result of being wrongfully convicted for a crime that they did not commit. And further insult—not only to our clients, but to the city as well—centers on the Bloomberg administration’s insistence that the case be not properly settled. So not only do these young men and their families continue to suffer, but there is an economic burden placed on taxpayers as a result of the expenditure of $6 million to defend this lawsuit, and this should be an affront to all well-meaning New Yorkers.”
In April of 1989, five young Black and Brown men were falsely accused of the brutal rape and assault of a white female jogger in Central Park. After confessions were coerced from the men, which were then recorded on video tape, the case made national headlines, furthering the story of a city that’s “out of control” and introducing media-sensationalized terms like “wilding” to the public. The boys, Salaam, Antron McCray, Raymond Santana, Kharey Wise and Kevin Richardson, were referred to as a “wolf pack” in the media. After being convicted, the young men wouldn’t be exonerated of their crimes until Matias Reyes confessed in 2002, well after their time was served.
During the promotion of his documentary “The Central Park Five” last November, Burns talked to the AmNews about how the media sold him on the story of how young Black and Brown boys were out of control.
“I bought it,” Burns said to the AmNews. “I thought, what was happening to our cities? What happened? [New York state Gov. Mario Cuomo] was rubbing his hands and saying the cities were ungovernable. It just seemed to be symbolic of a decline. And then I noticed that when they were vindicated, when their sentences were vacated 13 years later, I noticed that the coverage was nothing, and my outrage began to boil. And my outrage has continued to boil for the last 10 years.”
Attempts to contact the New York Police Department or the mayor’s office for comment were unsuccessful as of press time.
When the AmNews reached out to de Blasio, his spokesperson referred us back to a statement he made in January after City Comptroller John Liu wrote a letter to Bloomberg calling for a settlement.
“It’s long past time to heal these wounds,” said de Blasio in January. “Comptroller Liu is absolutely right in calling for an end to this painful chapter in our history. As a city, we have a moral obligation to right this injustice. It is in our collective interest—the wrongly accused, their families and the taxpayer—to settle this case and not let another year slip by without action.”
In the aforementioned letter to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Liu urged the city’s law department to settle with Salaam, McCray, Santana, Wise and Richardson in negotiations that the comptroller would facilitate. Liu even offered his boardroom as a venue for the discussions.
“As the trail of this case inevitably draws closer, litigation experience clearly demonstrates that now is an appropriate time for both parties to negotiate in earnest,” wrote Liu. “Prolonging the discovery process further only serves to increase the risk that city taxpayers will ultimately bear responsibility for significant attorneys’ fees incurred by plaintiffs.”
“With the changing of the administration, we are hoping for a settlement,” said Salaam. “Bloomberg has spent around $6 million trying to fight the settlement when he could just say, ‘Hey, we made a mistake.’ It’s that simple. But when the Central Park jogger case blew up, so many people just wanted blood. Mayor [Ed] Koch said, ‘We got ‘em. Now people are gonna really see how the justice system works.’ Well, this is how the justice system works.
“We were innocent, and this was a celebrated case, so it just goes to show how many other cases have innocent people convicted. Groups like the Innocence Project are getting convictions overturned all the time.”
Salaam continued, “Everyone knew this case was a sham, and when the sun came out, it was shown to be a travesty, and the real perpetrator who committed the crime confessed. It turns out that because they were not looking for the real person, he went on to kill a young Latina woman, and now her son is denied the chance to grow up with his mother. When an injustice is done, everyone suffers.”
Warren said that each of the five men is seeking $50 million a piece for the “prolonged injustice of this shameful case, where the failure to properly resolve this matter has been fueled by the likes of Linda Fairstein, who has made a very comfortable living off of what has been the misery inflicted on these young men, and Police Commissioner [Ray] Kelly, who has defended in the most unjustifiable manner police officers who were instrumental—along with Linda Fairstein, Elizabeth Lederer and Mike Sheehan—in manufacturing a wrongful conviction.
Warren continued, “Even in spite of the fact that the perpetrator of the crime has come forward, the present city administration still engages in this shameful intransigence in an attempt to legitimize the wrongful conviction of our clients. Enough is enough. But it is always up to the people to ensure that justice is served, and so we are expecting the de Blasio administration do what is right to make sure that justice is properly rendered.”
From youth rallies to community events, the young men can be seen out and about supporting various causes.
For decades, the community has rallied around the exonerated five men too. The tragic, real-life, boys-to-men story revolves around this horrendous crime, the atrocious conviction and devious, profitable career-building of key prosecuting players amidst the ongoing suffering of the Central Park Five and their families.
The internet is abuzz with support for the five men.
Responding to a post on Facebook by Salaam, the Rev. Wayne M. Weathers stated, “It’s about time! I pray true justice comes in the form of a great monetary blessing for your mistreatment and false imprisonment.”
Salaam concluded, “If you look a the history of Bloomberg, he worked at Solomon Brothers. The Central Park jogger worked at Solomon Brothers. Even if it wasn’t at the same time, they had worked for the same company, so he wasn’t going to do something about this case on his watch. He was trying to drag this out, hoping something would happen to us. But the whole city saw, and what he failed to realize was that the more he held out, the more positive history continues to be written. People are saying that they want better relations with the police and the community, but that is not happening. Bloomberg doesn’t see that if he says, ‘If we show that we can bend and show that we are human too,’ that would benefit everyone and show the people that they had a real interest in justice.”