A white woman who called police and falsely accused a black man of threatening her life after he asked her to put her dog on a leash will face minor charges, the Manhattan district attorney announced Monday.
The woman at the Central Park meeting, who was videotaped and sparked intense discussions about the history of false reports to the police made by white people and directed at black people, will be charged with filing a false report, a crime. minor punishable by up to one year in prison.
“Today our office initiated a trial against Amy Cooper for falsely reporting a third-degree incident,” said Cyrus R. Vance, the Manhattan district attorney. “We are firmly committed to holding perpetrators accountable for this conduct.”
Ms. Cooper was issued a summons and will be prosecuted on October 14. If convicted, you can be paroled or sentenced to community service or counseling in lieu of jail.
On Memorial Day, Mrs. Cooper, who had been walking with her dog, met Christian Cooper, an avid birder, in a semi-wild part of Central Park known as Ramble, where dogs must be tied up.
Mr. Cooper asked Mrs. Cooper, who is not related to him, to leash his dog, he said, and when she refused, he tried to lure the dog with treats, to force her to restrain her pet. The encounter worsened when Ms. Cooper told her that she was going to call the police and tell them that an African American man was threatening her life.
Mr. Cooper, who recorded the interaction on his phone, captured what happened next: “I am on the walk, there is a man, African American, he has a bicycle helmet and he is filming and threatening me and my dog,” he said. Mrs. Cooper hysterically to the 911 operator while clutching her dog’s collar.
Then, before hanging up, she said, “I am being threatened by a man on the Ramble, please send the police over there immediately!”
“Thank you,” said Mr. Cooper after putting his dog on a leash, just before the video ended.
Mr. Cooper, 57, a Harvard graduate who works in communications, has been a prominent birder in the city and sits on the board of directors for the Audubon Society of New York City.
Shortly after the video of the incident went viral, Ms. Cooper turned her dog Henry over to the cocker spaniel rescue group from which she had adopted him two years earlier. Since then she has been reunited with the dog.
Ms. Cooper, who had been the head of insurance portfolio management at Franklin Templeton, was fired from her job.
He also issued a public apology and tried to explain his response.
“I reacted emotionally and made false assumptions about his intentions when, in fact, I was the one who acted inappropriately by not having my dog on a leash,” Cooper said in the statement.
She added that when Mr. Cooper commented that he would not like what he “would do next” and then offered her dog treats, he assumed he was threatening her. Cooper said at the time that he had taken treats to attract his dog, something he said that most pet owners don’t like and that generally leads them to tether their dogs.
“I assumed we were being threatened when all I had intended to do was record our meeting on his phone,” Cooper said.
