BEHIND THE SCENES
Raymond Santana Finds Support from an Old Friend in Bid for City Council
35 years later, Pamela Perkins still has his back.
Raymond Santana of the Exonerated Five poses for a portrait in the South Bronx, where he’s now running for City Council decades after being wrongfully convicted as a teenager. (Niko Balkaran)
By Mikella Schuettler and Niko Balkaran
Raymond Santana, convicted 35 years ago for a crime he didn’t commit, is now walking the same streets, this time, as a candidate for City Council District 8.
“I’m not a politician. I’m just a man on a mission who loves his community and wants to do something,” Santana said.
Santana was just 14 when he and four other boys, all Black or Latino, were accused of beating and raping a white woman in Central Park in 1989 and became known as the Central Park Five. They were convicted in 1990, in a case widely understood as a miscarriage of justice.
In 2002, they were exonerated when Matias Reyes, the man who actually raped and beat the Central Park Jogger so severely that she needed months to learn to speak and walk again, confessed. By then he was in prison for raping five other women.
By that time, Santana and the others had served five years in prison on the strength of coerced confessions they later recanted. In 2014, the City of New York paid the five just under $41 million to settle a civil rights lawsuit.
Though it took the City decades to acknowledge their innocence, the late State Senator Bill Perkins never doubted it.
“From the moment that these young boys, these kids at the time were arrested, Bill was one of the first of many who stood up and said, they’re innocent,” said Mrs. Perkins, his wife. “Somehow he knew it in his heart that these kids couldn’t do it.”
Mr. Perkins stood by the teenagers, sounding the alarm that they were being railroading in the NYPD and New York media’s frenzy to find a suspect. Santana was 14 years old at the time and had grown up in the same apartment complex – Schomburg Plaza – where Mr. Perkins was head of the tenants association.
Mrs. Perkins can still picture attending the rallies and emotionally supporting the families of the boys. The first time she saw Santana, he was sitting in the courtroom.
“I felt sad and angry at the fact that these Black boys were being accused of such a heinous crime,” Mrs. Perkins said.
Mrs. Perkins remembers the trials, the tears, and conversations with Senator Perkins, trying to think of a way to free five boys the city had already decided were guilty.
She also remembers the day one of those young boys, now a man in his fifties, called to tell her that he was thinking of running for City Council. She didn’t hesitate to support him.
Ms. Perkins wrote a check for $250 on March 13, 2025.
“Why wouldn’t I?” Perkins asked in a phone interview.
After all, it was a natural “part of his evolution” as he, like the others, had been giving back “to the community that had their back.” Yusef Salaam, another member of the Exonerated Five, has served as the city council member for District 9 in Harlem since 2023.
“All of these young men now, they were able to turn their pain into power. They could have gone a different way, but they continue to advocate,” Ms. Perkins said.
Raymond Santana (center) poses with Mrs. Perkins and his campaign manager, William Allen, at an event. (Raymond Santana Instagram)
Anyone living in New York can recall the fear-mongering at the time of the convictions. The front-page hysteria. The hate.
They would also remember the full page ads Donald Trump placed in four of New York’s prominent newspapers, calling to reinstate the death penalty for five boys who hadn’t even gone to trial yet.
“He pushed out the $85,000 page ad back then…America look[ed] at us as the five most hated human beings on the planet Earth in 1989 and he kind of spearheaded that,” said Santana. “He kind of misled the public with that ad.”
Both Santana and Perkins remember that ad, and are reminded of its vitriol while President Trump sits in office.
As a teenager, he was thrown into detention (and later a state prison) with nothing but his innocence to protect him. The day he was released, Mrs. Perkins was waiting with his family. She remembers that day vividly.
“When he came out, he looked so different. You know, he went in as a little boy and came out as a man. All of them did. But I just remember tears and crying and hugging,” Ms. Perkins said.
Throughout the whole ordeal, Mr. and Mrs. Perkins had been supporting Santana’s family. After the exoneration, the couple and the boys remained close.
“We call him Uncle Bill,” Santana said. “Pam and my sister developed a great relationship, and Bill used to take my dad out to dinner often,” usually to Spanish restaurants where yellow rice and beans were a staple.
Now, more than two decades later, one of the young men Perkins fought to protect is stepping into the political arena himself.
“Now, instead of us fighting against individuals in the criminal justice system, we decide to take on a bigger fight,” Santana said. “This is another way to serve the people, another way to fight against the injustices that we face on a regular basis.”
For Santana, the campaign isn’t just a bid for public office. It’s a continuation of a promise. A promise to keep fighting, not just for himself, but for the same neighborhoods that never gave up on him.
“Looking at the conditions in my neighborhood, seeing this deterioration… it just came to a point where I said, ‘OK, maybe it’s time to change direction,” he said.
For Mrs. Perkins, Santana’s run is not just about policy. It’s about legacy, one her late husband helped build through decades of community advocacy and an unwavering belief in the innocence of the Exonerated Five.
“He wasn’t afraid to stand alone,” she said. “And that’s what, Raymond has.”
Mrs. Perkins, who still has family in the Schomburg Plaza and remains active in Harlem political circles, believes Santana’s candidacy represents something larger than one seat on the Council.
“He said, ‘Pam, I’m walking the streets like Bill,’” she recalled. “And he said, ‘I’m seeing stuff… I think I can make an impact.”
