Amy Cooper

 

Amy Cooper Made 2nd 911 Call to Falsely Accuse Black Bird-Watcher

Prosecutors said Ms. Cooper called the police first to claim she had been threatened by a man in Central Park who had asked her to leash her dog, then to claim he had assaulted her.

Amy Cooper was publicly shamed and lost her job after an encounter in Central Park that reignited discussions about false accusations made against Black people to the police. Credit...Christian Cooper, via Associated Press

Amy Cooper, the white woman who called the 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 on 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 Ms. 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.

Ms. Cooper had been charged in July, and no additional charges were announced on Wednesday. Ms. Illuzzi said the Manhattan district attorney’s office was negotiating a possible plea deal with Ms. Cooper that would allow her to avoid jail.