Free Republic

New York City Councilman Yusef Salaam is facing calls to step down as head of the council’s influential public safety committee after a controversial traffic stop revealed he was motoring around the Big Apple with out-of-state license plates and allegedly illegal tinted windows. Salaam is also taking heat with claims he embellished his Friday night encounter with an NYPD cop in Harlem, during which the officer pulled him over for the tinted windows but cut him a break when the lawmaker ID’d himself. “This is damning,” City Councilman Robert Holden (D-Queens) said in a post on X. “An elected official...

Yusef Salaam, a member of the exonerated “Central Park Five,” has officially won the Democratic primary for a seat on the New York city council, almost ensuring his eventual election to the seat. Salaam had a significant lead over his opponents, New York Assembly members Inez Dickens and Al Taylor, for the nomination to represent Council District 9 in Central Harlem, but he needed additional votes released Wednesday to clinch victory. Initial unofficial results put Salaam as the clear leader with 50.14 percent of the vote, while Dickens and Taylor had about 25 and 14 percent, respectively. Incumbent Kristin Jordan,...

Kevin Richardson, from the exonerated Central Park Five, to speak at VCU By Matthew Lovisa Division of Student Affairs 804-828-1424 mlovisa@vcu.edu By Meghan Zapiec Activities Programming Board (804) 828-4005 mzapiec@vcu.edu Monday, Oct. 21, 2019 Kevin Richardson, a member of the exonerated Central Park Five, will speak at Virginia Commonwealth University on Oct. 22. The event, “When They See Me,” will take place at 7 p.m. in the Commonwealth Ballroom of the University Student Commons, 907 Floyd Ave. Richardson’s talk is sponsored by VCU’s Activities Programming Board. The event is sold out. Media are invited to attend and may RSVP by...

President Donald Trump responded to a question about the Central Park Five during his appearance before reporters on Tuesday, once again declining to apologize for his actions following the incident. When asked by a reporter if he would apologize for his actions surrounding the case -- he took out full-page newspaper ads calling for the death penalty that read: "Bring Back The Death Penalty. Bring Back Our Police!" -- Trump instead asked why the topic was relevant. "Why do you bring that question up now? It's an interesting time to bring it up. You have people on both sides of...

In an op-ed from Tuesday's Wall Street Journal, former New York City prosecutor Linda Fairstein responded to the recent Netflix series on the Central Park Five, and accused its producer, Ava DuVernay, of fabricating words attributed to her character, played by Felicity Huffman, to portray her as a racist who was determined to convict the teens in the face of an alleged lack of evidence against them. Fairstein began the article, titled "Netflix's False Story of the Central Park Five," by declaring that the series, When They See Us, is "so full of distortions and falsehoods as to be an...

The new Netflix series, This Is How They See Us, perpetuates the myth, which began circulating about 17 years ago, that the so-called “Central Park Five” (CP5) are innocent of the notoriously brutal attack on “the Central Park Jogger,” Trisha Meili, that occurred in 1989. The CP5 have now entered the martyrology of the Racism-Industrial-Complex (RIC).This is How They See Us is racial fantasy and ideological propaganda designed to strengthen the RIC’s narrative of choice, the politically-advantageous fairy tale of unrelenting White Racism and Black Suffering.     And when that narrative can be spun to score points against Donald...

The African folktale version of the 1989 Central Park gang-rape has swept the populace! The mob thirsts for vengeance against evil spirits, like Linda Fairstein. In the past week, Fairstein, the head of the sex crimes unit of the Manhattan District Attorney's office during the trials of the accused rapists, has been exiled from society, like an albino chased from the village at the instigation of witch doctors. In a matter of days, she's been forced off of a half-dozen corporate boards, dropped by her publisher and dumped by her talent agency. The people doing the ostracizing are full of...

The prosecutor who put the Central Park Five in prison has penned an angry op-ed claiming the new Netflix series about the case is an 'outright fabrication' and says she stands by her belief that the men should still be behind bars for the other crimes despite being exonerated of rape. Linda Fairstein, 72, was the head of the Manhattan District Attorney's sex crimes unit when Raymond Santana, 14, Kevin Richardson, 15, Antron McCray, 15, Yusef Salaam, 15, and Korey Wise, 16, were accused of raping and attacking Trisha Meili in 1989.

Filmmaker Ava DuVernay’s new Netflix series, When They See Us, is being billed as an important exposé of the American criminal-justice system's racist underbelly. As a review in the Daily Beast explains, it is the “riveting” story of how that system coerced and intimidated five innocent “teenage boys of color” into confessing to the highly publicized “rape and vicious assault of Trisha Meili, a white investment banker,” in New York's Central Park on April 19, 1989. We are told that the boys — Kharey Wise, Antron McCray, Yusef Salaam, Kevin Richardson, and Raymond Santana — tragically had “their youth...

This weekend, the world watched tragedy unfold in Charlottesville, Virginia. A young woman, Heather Heyer, lost her life and at least 19 others were injured when a car rammed into a crowd of people gathered to counter white supremacist protesters. What occurred in Charlottesville is a horrific example of hatred unleashing itself on American streets in 2017. But what we must keep in mind is that Charlottesville is a symptom and we must deal with the cause: hate, bias and racism have been empowered and taken from the margins into the mainstream. Now we must come to terms with the...

Nearly three months after the city agreed on the settlement, a federal judge has signed off on $41 million to be given to the five men who, as teens, were wrongfully convicted of raping a jogger in Central Park. According to the Daily News, "Under the deal approved by Magistrate Judge Ronald Ellis, Antron McCray, Raymond Santana, Yusef Salaam and Kevin Richardson will get $7.125 million for their years in prison, while Korey Wise will receive $12.25 million. The city will also pay an additional $285,000 in legal fees. The city, however, doesn’t admit to any wrongdoing in the case."...

Twenty-five years ago, Trisha Meili—“the Central Park jogger”—was a 28 year-old employee for a prestigious Manhattan investment banker when she was mercilessly beaten, raped, and left for dead by thugs. Meili lost approximately 80 percent of her blood. Her skull was fractured to the point that her one eye had popped out of its socket. On the scale of 3 to 15 that neurologists use to gauge brain functioning, Meili’s was assigned a rating of 4. She spent nearly the next two weeks in a coma, with experts expecting her to die. This crime became a racially explosive issue,...