At about a quarter after nine, the evening of April 19^th, 1989, 28-year-old Trisha Meili was brutally raped and left for dead in Central Park. She was found, bleeding and nearly lifeless, by two joggers about four hours later. In a city where race relations were at all-time low, the NYPD was under serious pressure to solve the case of the young white woman who had been assaulted by, allegedly, a man or men of color. That night and into the next morning Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Kharey Wise and Yusuf Salaam were systematically rounded up and interrogated for hours upon hours by detectives eager to give the public some sense of justice for this horrible crime that took place in New York’s most sacred of retreats.Pitting one against the other, the cops forced all but one of these 14, 15 and 16-year-old black kids from Harlem to write and then videotape confessions. After their confessions, every single one of them claimed coersion and denied participating in the crime in any way. They refused every plea deal they were offered and maintained their innocence. The boys were tried, convicted, sentenced and served between six and half and 13 years. Problem continues to be…they didn’t rape Trisha Meili. They didn’t do it. And in 2002, a man named Matias Reyes totally confessed to the crime while serving a 33 year sentence for numerous other crimes. Ken Burns’ The Central Park Five explores the journeys of these inner-city teens in a chaotic city with a cracked system that took the lives of so many in its desperate and careless attempt to solve this heinous crime.The Central Park Five is a story of prejudice, broken lives, broken families and an irresponsible, frenzied media. Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Kharey Wise and Yusuf Salaam’s sentences were vacated in 2002, but these five men continue to struggle putting the pieces back together after having spent nearly a decade of their lives wrongfully incarcerated. Even if it’s not perfect, you must see this film. Go buy the DVD or order it on demand. The Central Park Five reminds us of the fragility of our judicial system, the power that words and images we invent have over one another and the potential ruthlessness of the collective ‘we.’