The episode was written by William M. Finkelstein and directed by James Quinn, and originally aired on NBC on January 24, 2001.
A couple in a rowboat in Central Park discover the body of a severely beaten woman in a pond during the Puerto Rican Day Parade celebrations.
Detectives Lennie Briscoe and Ed Green interview Hispanic men arrested for robbery and sexual assault in the park that day.
However, he claims he never intended to kill her, and that his actions were motivated by peer pressure to intimidate the woman as his friends did to the other women who were attacked.
"Sunday in the Park with Jorge" was loosely based on the Puerto Rican Day Parade attacks in June 2000 before the episode aired, in which over four dozen women claimed to be groped and where the police response was heavily criticized.
Answering a grievance from the National Puerto Rican Coalition, who did not deny the crime nor the Puerto Rican background of the perpetrators, network executives issued a formal apology and made a pledge to "improve our procedures regarding sensitive programming issues".