NEW YORK (AP) — Amy Cooper, the white woman charged with filing a false police report for calling 911 during a dispute with a Black man in New York’s Central Park in May, made a second, previously unreported call in which she falsely claimed the man had “tried to assault her,” a prosecutor said Wednesday.

Assistant District Attorney Joan Illuzzi-Orbon described the second call as Cooper was being arraigned by video in a case that had garnered worldwide attention but was put on hold for months because of the coronavirus pandemic. Cooper did not enter a plea to the misdemeanor charge.

In the first 911 call, which was captured on a widely seen video of the confrontation, Cooper told a dispatcher only that the man, a birdwatcher named Christian Cooper, was threatening her. The second call was not recorded on video, but a 911 dispatcher provided prosecutors with a sworn affidavit regarding the calls, Illuzzi said.

“Using the police in a way that is was both racially offensive and designed to intimidate is something that can’t be ignored. Therefore we charged her,” said Illuzzi, whose last high-profile prosecution sent Harvey Weinstein to prison in March for rape.

The case was adjourned until Nov. 17 to allow prosecutors and her lawyer to work on a possible resolution that Illuzzi said could see Cooper participating in a program to educate her and the community “on the harm caused by such actions.”

Illuzzi didn’t get into details on what actions Cooper might be required to take, but said the 40-year-old former investment portfolio manager would have to take responsibility for her actions. The criminal process “can be an opportunity for introspection and education,” Illuzzi said. The range of options could include some type of racial sensitivity training or a public awareness campaign.

In a statement, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. said his office “will pursue a resolution of this case which holds Ms. Cooper accountable while healing our community, restoring justice, and deterring others from perpetuating this racist practice.”

Cooper drew widespread condemnation and was fired from her job at investment firm Franklin Templeton after frantically calling 911 to claim she was being threatened by “an African American man,” Christian Cooper, who had confronted her for walking her dog without a leash. On the video Christian Cooper recorded of Amy Cooper, he sounded calm and appeared to keep a safe distance from her.

There is no relation between Christian Cooper and Amy Cooper.

In the video posted on social media, Christian Cooper claimed her cocker spaniel was “tearing through the plantings” in the Ramble, a secluded section of Central Park popular with birdwatchers, and told her she should go to another part of the park. When she refused, he pulled out dog treats, causing her to scream at him to not come near her dog.

Amy Cooper also warned him she would summon police unless he stopped recording.

“I’m going to tell them there’s an African American man threatening my life,” Amy Cooper is heard saying in the video as she pulls down her face mask and struggles to control her dog.

“Please call the cops,” said Christian Cooper.

“There’s an African American man, I’m in Central Park, he is recording me and threatening myself and my dog. … Please send the cops immediately!” she said during the 911 call before the recording stops.

Police said that by the time officers responded, Amy and Christian Cooper were both gone.

After the backlash, Amy Cooper released an apology through a public relations service, saying she “reacted emotionally and made false assumptions about his intentions.”

“He had every right to request that I leash my dog in an area where it was required,” she said in the written statement. “I am well aware of the pain that misassumptions and insensitive statements about race cause and would never have imagined that I would be involved in the type of incident that occurred with Chris.”

Amy Cooper’s 911 calls, which happened the same day that Minneapolis police killed George Floyd, was seen by many as a stark example of everyday racism and fueled outrage in the period leading up to street protests sparked by Floyd’s death.

It also inspired New York state lawmakers in June to pass a law that makes it easier under civil rights law to sue an individual who calls a police officer on someone “without reason” because of their background, including race and national origin.

Cooper was charged under an existing false-report law that’s been long on the books and doesn’t reference race.

“Fortunately, no one was injured or killed in the police response to Ms. Cooper’s hoax,” said Vance.

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I was among a group of African American staff who overheard a very senior Senator make a comment that, were I in a mood to be charitable, I would describe as ‘racially insensitive.’

But I’m not, so let’s call it what it was: racist.

It was ugly enough that the following morning he was in full damage-control mode, placing personal apology phone calls to every black staffer who was present and may have overheard his remark.

I will never forget how the call started. The senator greeted me by name, introduced himself, and said he was sorry for what I had heard the previous day. ‘It’s not who I am. I’m not that way,‘ he told me.

Multiple times during the conversation, he returned to the same theme — that regardless of whatever I heard, he wasn’t the horrible person I might assume him to be.

It remains one of the more remarkable conversations I’ve ever had: ten minutes of listening to a guy apologize for doing something racist, despite an almost comical inability to bring himself to even say the word ‘racist.’

By now, you’ve probably seen the viral video of Amy Cooper weaponizing her privilege faster than you can say the words ‘race card.’

Prior to filming the incident, Christian Cooper (no relation), who is black, asked Amy Cooper to leash her dog as per park rules. According to an account of the incident that Christian Cooper posted on Facebook along with the viral footage, he then told her, ‘Look, if you’re going to do what you want, I’m going to do what I want, but you’re not going to like it.’ (‘I didn’t know what that meant. When you’re alone in a wooded area, that’s absolutely terrifying, right?’ Amy Cooper later expressed to CNN.)

Christian Cooper then started filming, and their exchange prompted Amy Cooper to call the cops in hysterics, pleading with them to send officers because, she claimed, she was being threatened by an African American man. Most chilling is that prior to calling the police, she warned Christian Cooper that she would call the cops to ‘tell them there’s an African American man threatening [her] life,’ a claim that any objective viewer would find laughable.

I’ll get back to Amy Cooper’s own flawed apology and what we can draw from it in a moment.

But first, to anyone trying to wring their hands about what is and isn’t racist, let me ask a basic question: Why did she immediately bring up Christian Cooper’s race when threatening to call the police, prior to even dialing?

It’s as if she needed to remind him that even though he was legally in the right and was the one holding the camera, she held all the societal power. Could she have been well aware of the numerous, tragic encounters between black men and boys and police (or renegade white men with shotguns taking the law into their own hands)? Or as a white woman, did she just have a hunch that the public would reflexively trust her account of the situation over his? It’s hard to imagine otherwise.

Nevertheless, it seems she knew afterward that she’d stepped in it. Not unlike the Senator, she gave what she considered to be an apology, claiming she meant no harm to Christian Cooper. And in doing so, she spoke in a manner reminiscent of many people far more famous than she who sought to absolve themselves by boasting of their racial virtue.

From chef Paula Deen’s plea to be judged by ‘what’s in the heart,’ despite her use of ethnic slurs, to NASCAR driver Kyle Larson’s reminder that ‘[he] wasn’t raised that way’ (as if we’d asked), or squirrely apologies from Madonna, Charlie Sheen, Paris Hilton, Tim Allen and countless others, offenders often seem to try to get a pass from actual contrition by merely saying (or convincing themselves) they’re not racist.

Amy Cooper was not widely known prior to this event, and likely doesn’t have access to the same public relations resources as rich celebrities who have apologized for their behavior. She is also, of course, human, and her full character is defined by more than a singular moment caught on tape, however shameful.

But it is still important to understand the impact Amy Cooper’s actions could have had. With this in mind, let’s play out the case of the two Coopers of Central Park, and take Amy Cooper at her word that she’s not a racist (whatever that means). Then what?

What if police had arrived at the scene, guns drawn, responding to the screams of a white damsel (with a cute dog, to boot) in distress? How could that scene have ended differently for the black man falsely accused of threatening her life? Had this ended in tragedy, would it matter that she had the decency to have never previously turned a fire hose on a black person or hung a noose at one’s home?

No. Regardless of her intent, her actions could have carried profound, racist consequences. And she had to — or at least ought to — have known that. In this case, and in so many others, words and actions matter. Both can be racist. Both often are.

Or, put another way, perhaps Amy Cooper is a racist. Perhaps she isn’t. It doesn’t matter. How she chooses to define herself is irrelevant to the question of what the impact of her (actually racist) actions was.

All of this flows from white people’s deep fear of the word ‘racist,’ which many evidently see as ‘the absolute worst, most vile thing you can call a person,’ as former Maine Governor Paul LePage once put it. This line of thinking seems to be that if being racist is an unforgivable sin, happening to do an occasional racist thing can be immediately forgiven by one’s simply not being racist to the core. Easy enough. But this disregards the notion that more often than not in matters or race, it’s the consequences (and not the intent) that cause the hurt.

Moreover, embedded in this attitude is the perverse notion that white people get to set the terms of the debate over what is racist. Maybe it’s me, but as someone who has actually been called a ‘n*****’ by white people more times than I care to count, I think I’m in a far better position to decide who has done something racist than, say, former ‘Seinfeld’ star Michael Richards.

The actor apologized and claimed he, too, was not a racist after being filmed onstage in an extended rant shouting at a black man, ‘fifty years ago we’d have you upside down with a f***ing fork up your ass… A n*****, look, there’s a n*****!’

Comedian Chris Rock summed the issue up perfectly when he asked, ‘what do you got to do, shoot Medgar Evers to be a racist?’

White people could start with acknowledging in their apologies that even good people are capable of doing racist things. A real expression of contrition should include: ‘I’m ashamed that I was capable of doing something so racist.’ Or, ‘How I was raised decades ago is irrelevant; I did something racist today, and am sorry.’ Or perhaps, ‘I don’t think I harbor actual animus, but regardless of whether I do, I have work to do.’

If you are a white person who is ever in a position to apologize for something racist, try that approach next time. You’ll be a lot more credible to those tasked with forgiving you.

And if it’s to me, who knows? I (probably) won’t even accuse you of being that way.Popular in the Community

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