The case against Amy Cooper, the white woman who called the cops on Black birdwatcher Christian Cooper, has been dropped. The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office announced on Tuesday (Feb. 16) that it had dropped the misdemeanor criminal charge against Amy because she completed a racial bias class.
via: Complex
The charges against the white woman who infamously called police on a Black birdwatcher in Central Park have been dismissed.
The charges in question, which were brought after the May 25 incident in which Amy Cooper—who was widely referred to as a “Central Park Karen”—falsely claimed to authorities that Christian Cooper (the birdwatcher) had threatened her life, were confirmed as dismissed in a New York Times report on Tuesday following Ms. Cooper’s completion of a therapeutic educational program. That program, per the report, included education on racial biases.
A judge was asked to dismiss the count of filing a false report, which the judge did at a hearing in Manhattan Criminal Court. As you may recall, it was reported in October that Ms. Cooper had also falsely told authorities that Mr. Cooper (who is not related to Ms. Cooper) had “tried to assault her” in Central Park. She is also said to have conceded that no assault took place once police arrived on the scene, despite having said the opposite when speaking with dispatchers.
In a press release shared back in July, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. urged the public to take seriously the problem of making false reports to police.
“Today our Office initiated a prosecution of Amy Cooper for Falsely Reporting an Incident in the Third Degree,” Vance said at the time. “Our office will provide the public with additional information as the case proceeds. At this time I would like to encourage anyone who has been the target of false reporting to contact our Office. We are strongly committed to holding perpetrators of this conduct accountable.”
“I’m gonna tell them there’s an African American man threatening my life,” she said at one point in the clip, which went viral and ultimately resulted in Ms. Cooper losing her job.
In the viral clip from Mr. Cooper of the May incident, Ms. Cooper was shown threatening to call cops after he asked her to put her dog on a leash.
In a subsequent interview with The View last summer, Mr. Cooper said he accepted Ms. Cooper’s apology.
“I do accept her apology,” he said at the time. “It’s a first step. I think she’s gotta do some reflection on what happened because, you know, up until the moment when she made that statement and she made that phone call, it was just a conflict between a birder and a dogwalker. Then she took it to a very dark place.”
Christian Cooper, the Central Park birdwatcher whose video of his interaction with a white dog walker went viral, tells us he accepts the woman’s apology: “It’s a first step. I think she’s gotta do some reflection.”
Christian Cooper, the Central Park birdwatcher whose video of his interaction with a white dog walker went viral, tells us he accepts the woman’s apology: “It’s a first step. I think she’s gotta do some reflection.”
“She took it to a very dark place.” https://t.co/emf4UFsijA pic.twitter.com/f9xjMrvBL6
— The View (@TheView) May 28, 2020
Sounds about white.
