Amy Cooper, whose threats to call the police on a black man during a Central Park encounter last year that went viral, has had her criminal case dismissed.
Cooper was facing a misdemeanor charge for falsely reporting an assault during an encounter with Christian Cooper (no relation), who asked her to leash her dog in the Central Park Ramble on May 25, 2020.
She infamously became known as “Central Park Karen” after the encounter — which Christian Cooper recorded on his cellphone — went viral.
During Tuesday’s hearing, prosecutors asked the judge to dismiss the charge against her after Cooper completed the therapy sessions “which focused on the ways in which Ms. Cooper could appreciate that racial identities shape our lives but we cannot use them to harm ourselves or others,” Assistant District Attorney Joan Illuzzi said during the hearing.
“Having completed 5 sessions, Ms. Cooper’s therapist reported that it was a moving experience and that Ms. Cooper learned a lot in their sessions together,” Illuzzi said.
The judge granted the prosecution’s motion to dismiss the charge.
Cooper lost her job at Franklin Templeton soon after the incident sparked outrage as yet another glaring example of white people falsely reporting Black people to police.
Cooper was walking her dog in the Ramble when Christian Cooper asked her to put her dog on the leash per the sign in the area. During their conversation, she told him that she was going to call the police and “tell them there’s an African American man threatening my life.”
She then called 911 to report that a Black male was threatening her inside the Ramble and repeated the false accusation in a second phone call to 911, adding that the man “tried to assault her.”
When officers responded to the scene, she admitted that Christian Cooper had not tried to assault her or even come into contact with her.
Christian Cooper did not want to press charges but the Manhattan DA alleged that Amy Cooper “engaged in racist criminal conduct.”
Her offense, Illuzzi said Tuesday, “wasn’t solely against one individual but was a threat to the community if allowed to go unchecked.”
“The simple principle is that one cannot use the police to threaten another and in this case, in a racially offensive and charged manner,” she said.
Citing her lack of criminal background, prosecutors offered her a “restorative justice solution; designed not just to punish but to educate and promote community healing,” Illuzzi said.
Cooper was then sent to the Critical Therapy Center where she was provided with “psychoeducation and therapy services” about racial equity that were designed for “introspection and progress.”
Cooper’s lawyer tweeted the following:
After a thorough & honest inquiry, the New York DA's office dismissed all charges today against #AmyCooper. We thank them for their integrity & concur w/ the outcome. Others rushed to the wrong conclusion based on inadequate investigation & they may yet face legal consequences.
— Robert Barnes (@barnes_law) February 16, 2021
I truly appreciate the DA showing such willingness to be lenient to a white woman. I wonder if such leniency colors all his decisions.Report
DA had to strongly push to get this far. Victim didn’t want to do anything, didn’t cooperate, and even wrote an op-ed saying it was a mistake.
Sounds like the cops at the scene did a good job since she fessed up at that point.Report
How often does a confession from the perpetrator, and uncooperative witnesses lead to dismissed charges?
My take, this conviction would not be a feather in his cap, so he was happy to play it down.Report
Charges weren’t dismissed, they made a deal.
I think these guys min-max time rather than victory. Making a deal is quick, fighting in court is not.
And again, he was the only one pushing for anything so my expectation is, if anything, he was virtue signaling the other way.
My brother in law had a cop tell him they liked being pulled in because the alternatives were worse and their job is to defuse this sort of thing.
I’ve called the police on my neighbors. They’ve called on me. One of my ex-relatives has done WAY more than that in terms of falsely trying to get the cops spun up. This kind of super-heated emotional crap is where the police live and they’re VERY used to being weaponized.
It’s why I keep saying any justice system needs to be able to deal with false reporting and just trusting everyone to tell the truth is nuts.
She backed off with the first responders and the victim thought firing her was more than enough. I’m surprised she didn’t get a pass.Report
My point is that a lot of people get hooked up by the police and DAs for violations that were effectively harmless (no victim except malum prohibitum) and don’t get nice, diversionary deals.
So is this DA known to seek diversion over conviction? How often does he extend that option to folks who are not well to do white women? If he’s someone who seeks rehabilitation/restoration over punishment, that’s awesome.
But my cynical nature makes it hard to grant that off the bat.Report
Percentage-wise your “a lot” probably rounds to zero.
IMHO you’re not being cynical enough.
My expectation is false reporting happens a lot and it’s almost never punished. Jussie Smollett took it WAY further and had almost nothing happen to him.
Here the DA is the only person pushing for anything to happen. Fitting him for a bad guy hat when this is almost never punished, especially if the victim doesn’t want it, is probably unwarranted.Report
I’m betting it isn’t zero, but if you got a good source to prove me wrong…
I’m not just looking at false reporting (although I agree that false reporting should get punished a lot more), I’m looking at all malum prohibitum type offenses.
Get popped for possession, do you get offered diversion and dismissal as a matter of course, or do you get time and fines?
What about other ‘victimless crimes’?Report
You’re really reaching by trying to compare this to possession.
What we have is two people arguing over dog poop and the cops falsely being called.
By false reporting standards this wasn’t very bad nor very determined… and we normally don’t do anything about false reporting a lot worse than this.Report
So are you saying that simple drug possession is more bad than falsely reporting that a person threatened you?Report
“more bad” is an ethical judgement.
I’m pointing out we have not declared “War” on false reporting and don’t normally do anything, much less imprison people for decades.
IMHO the expected result for her crime is roughly zero. Ergo suggesting the DA went easy on her because of her race is nonsense because the DA went really hard on her.Report
Conceded.Report
I can’t find any numbers for anyone actually convicted of this. My general impression is “rounds to zero” is a good guess.Report
Uncooperative witnesses are the main way I win cases. Its the usual way these things end.Report
Even if the police have a confession?Report
Maybe, maybe not, that kind of thing has a lot of context to it so its hard to make a general ruling.Report
Fair enoughReport
“Cooper was then sent to the Critical Therapy Center where she was provided with “psychoeducation and therapy services” about racial equity that were designed for “introspection and progress.” ”
Zoinks. We write sentences like this in public now.Report
Sounds exactly like the verbiage at the places where offenders get sent if they are getting trt instead of jail.Report
Funny how Buzzfeed made no mention of Christian Cooper threat against her dog. He even admitted it.Report
If I had to guess, I’d say that there’s some weird logic on the part of The State that goes like this:
She was relying on the cops showing up and being racist against the black dude.
Our cops are not racist.
If our cops had shown up they’d have seen the situation for what it was and acted appropriately and NOT SHOT ANYBODY.
Therefore she was not issuing an *ACTUAL* threat against this guy.
Now since she was thinking that she was issuing an actual threat, she needs to be reeducated on that fact.
We have sent her to class to learn new things.
Situation resolved.
I mean, if I had to guess what the logic was.Report
Funnily enough when somebody commits a DUI they get sent to treatment for their alcohol problem. That does seem logical.
Restorative Justice is often seen as one alt to our current cop /jail system by people who want reform.Report
Sure, but I’m pretty sure that The Gummint doesn’t want to acknowledge that calling the police on an innocent black dude is a threat to the innocent black dude.Report
I think a false report is bad no matter what. If you want crim justice reform it is going to look like education, pretrial diversion and Restorative Justice.Report
Oh, indeed, it *IS* bad.
But was the innocent black guy’s life in danger? Of course not. The cops are *GOOD*.
Indeed, they’re the thin blue line that keeps us, all of us, safe.Report
Ummm yeah… What an incisive contribution to the discourse.Report
It has to do with whether The State would want to acknowledge that an obviously innocent black guy has anything to fear from the cops when they show up.
If you see The State not wanting to acknowledge that as relevant to the discourse, you might see my discussion of the cops being *GOOD* as a gentle tweaking of The State’s position.
If you don’t see The State’s acknowledgement of whether there is an implied threat to an innocent black guy in calling the cops to show up as relevant to any point I may be making, I imagine that this entire comment thread is confusing to you and seeing me as wanting to talk about the threats posed by the police to innocent people probably comes across as me just making squawking sounds very loudly.Report
No Jay you come across as obtuse and hectoring. False reports are wrong and against the law even if we had the cops we want instead of what we have. The gov doesn’t have to admit cops are a danger for just that reason. If you want CJ reform then applaud when good things happen and work to spread that to people who don’t get those same advantages.Report
Exactly. If this had gone to trial, proof that the cops were not, in fact, a threat, or that Karen didn’t think the cops were a threat — both likely inadmissible — would not be a defense. And even really nice cops could, very gently and politely, arrest the guy if, for whatever reason (we can’t assume telepathic cops), they bought Karen’s story. That they wouldn’t have opened up a serious can of whoop-ass on the guy wouldn’t help Karen in the least.Report
So… is the argument that this was an example of CJ reform?
For the record, I do not see it that way.Report
No, quite the opposite. But then you’d have to read what people actually said.Report
If you want crim justice reform it is going to look like education, pretrial diversion and Restorative Justice.
And Restorative Justice is often seen as one alt to our current cop /jail system by people who want reform.
Please explain to me how this is an example of the opposite of CJ reform.Report
CJ reform is all about ways to divert people away from cops or prison. Pre trial diversion /treatments are a way for people to avoid jail. They are really common. I’ll admit to having worked in”reeducation camps ” myself. Used to work in a substance abuse treatment facility. Most of our clients had dui’s, child abuse or dv. All drug involved. Would you prefer those people in jail?Report
Most of our clients had dui’s, child abuse or dv. All drug involved. Would you prefer those people in jail?
If sufficiently privileged ones (or insufficiently disprivileged ones) ended up in class and sufficiently disprivileged ones ended up in prison, then these are examples of a lot of things, I suppose.
But if there is “disparate impact”, I wouldn’t use it as an example of “justice”.
Even if I liked it happening to this or that example.Report
Lol. You got the lingo. It was at an Alaska Native Corp. Almost everybody was poor or working class. Most were indigenous.
If you want CJ reform then more treatment facilities, more MH care, more social services are what you want.Report
Yeah, I’d agree with that.
Which brings us to the Karen Case that this post is talking about.Report
You’re making the same mistake she did, i.e. assuming that what the media shows is the rule and not the exception.Report
This likely a good outcome. To Americans want blood and love harsh punishment. Did race lead to her getting classes instead of sitting in Rikers Island… Certainly. It would be better if POC were given chances at pretrial diversion. But this is better then more people in jail. She is she unlikely to be a threat and has suffered a lot of non jail pain. Let’s just let everybody get this kind of treatment.Report
What does
mean? It sure reads like “If you express the opinion that my client should have been prosecuted, we’ll sue you.”Report
For the record, Robert Barnes is a grade A a**hole, and doesn’t appear to me, as an outsider, to be a smart of a lawyer as he thinks he is.Report