White woman made second 911 call to falsely accuse Black bird-watcher in N.Y.
NEW YORK
Amy Cooper, the white woman who called police on a Black bird-watcher in Central Park, made a second, previously unreported call to 911 in which she falsely claimed that the man “tried to assault her,” a prosecutor said Wednesday.
“The defendant twice reported that an African American man was putting her in danger, first by stating that he was threatening her and her dog, then making a second call indicating that he tried to assault her in the Ramble area of the park,” Joan Illuzzi, a senior prosecutor, said.
The second call was disclosed as Cooper appeared remotely in Manhattan Criminal Court to answer a misdemeanor charge of filing a false police report, which carries a maximum sentence of a year in jail.
Cooper had been charged in July, and no additional charges were announced Wednesday. Illuzzi said the Manhattan district attorney’s office was negotiating a possible plea deal with Cooper that would allow her to avoid jail.
Cooper was filmed calling 911 from an isolated area in Central Park after a Black man asked her to leash her dog, as the rules required. During the first call, she said multiple times that an “African
American man” was threatening her, emphasizing his race to the operator as she raised her voice frantically.
Video of the encounter, shot by the man, Christian Cooper, on his phone, has been viewed nearly 45 million times. Its timing, one day before protests erupted nationwide over the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, only deepened its role in sparking outrage over what many viewed as an example of everyday racism. (Amy Cooper is not related to Christian Cooper.)
But prosecutors said Cooper made a later call to 911, which was not shown in the video. In that call, Cooper told the dispatcher that Christian Cooper had tried to assault her, according to a criminal complaint.
When police arrived, however, Cooper told an officer that her reports were untrue and that Christian Cooper had not touched or assaulted her, the complaint said.
The criminal complaint mentioned two calls, but charged her with only one count.
Illuzzi told the court that Cooper had used police in a way that was “both racially offensive and designed to intimidate,” and that her actions were “something that can’t be ignored.”