The white New York City woman who called police during a dispute in May with a Black birdwatcher when he asked her to leash her dog in an incident captured on video that went viral was charged Monday (July 6th) with filing a false police report, which has a maximum penalty of a year behind bars. The woman, Amy Cooper, had her dog off the leash in an area of Central Park where dogs are supposed to be leashed. When bird watcher Christian Cooper asked her to leash the dog, she refused and said she would call the police, stating, "I’m going to tell them there’s an African American man threatening my life." She then called 911 and frantically said she was being threatened by, quote, "an African American man," even though the video shows him a distance from her and calm. Cooper's attorney, Robert Barnes, said she will fight the charge, saying, she'd already lost her job and, quote, "her public life. Now some demand her freedom?" In the backlash over the video, Amy Cooper was fired from her job and temporarily had her dog taken away. She issued an apology, saying she, quote, "reacted emotionally and made false assumptions about his intentions."
Here is my original blog post from May with the info and details:
He asks her to leash her dog. She calls police to say he's threatening her