A second 911 call
Oy. Amy Cooper made two calls to the police that day.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office filed a misdemeanor charge Wednesday against the White woman who called police on a Black man birdwatching in Central Park in May and revealed that she had made a second 911 call about the encounter.
Amy Cooper was charged in New York County Criminal Court with falsely reporting an incident in the third degree, according to Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr.
The second call wasn’t to say never mind, I got rattled but nothing actually happened, I’m fine, I apologize for wasting your time. No, she went the other way.
In addition, according to the criminal complaint and as stated in court, Amy Cooper made a second, previously unreported call to police and repeated the accusation, adding that the man “tried to assault her,” the DA’s office said.
“When responding officers arrived, Ms. Cooper admitted that the male had not ‘tried to assault’ or come into contact with her,” a release from the DA’s office said.
I wonder if she’s ever heard of Emmett Till. She shouldn’t aspire to be another Carolyn Bryant.
Cooper and her attorney appeared before a judge on Wednesday morning. No plea was entered and the case was adjourned until November 17 as the prosecutor and defense work toward a possible disposition.
The prosecutor indicated they are exploring with the defense a program designed to have the defendant take responsibility for her actions but also educate her and the community on the harm caused by such actions.
It’s hard not to wonder how many such explorations happen when the defendant is not white, but at the same time if her sentence is educating the community on the harm of racism, at least that could be useful.
On a related, but slightly opposite note, apparently the number one Halloween costume this year is…Karen. The mask is extreme, and it is definitely a nasty costume.
What??? Tell us more.
Never mind, I found it. Fucking hell.
The article is a little vague on when the second call occurred, but I assume that it was after Mr. Cooper turned off his phone and left.
If so, that isn’t a minor detail in my opinion. Ms. Cooper could try to rationalize the first call as something she did out of genuine (though surely misplaced) fear for herself or her dog, and that she made the nasty decision to bring race into it (we never call it “playing the race card” when it’s a white person, do we?) because that was the easiest “weapon” available to her. Still ugly and nasty, but we can sort of understand people getting ugly and nasty when they’re scared.
But if I’m correctly inferring that he had already left the area, that second call could only have been for the purpose of hoping the cops would find and arrest him. That’s not fear or “self-defense,” that’s retribution. That’s a desire to “win” the confrontation.
Now, is it a big crime requiring serious punishment? No. On the whole, I think the system needs to move in the direction of giving minorities the understanding that white defendants get rather than punishing white defendants more like minorities. But I think it shows a rather ugly side to Amy Cooper beyond what we already knew.
Same here. That’s what I was trying to get at in the last paragraph.
But what if the second call had led to the arrest, imprisonment, or even death (during an attempt to arrest) of the bird-watcher? Amy Cooper was playing with fire. I’m afraid I do think it a serious crime.
Oh I do too. But what to do about a serious crime is another matter. Rehabilitation is better than punishment.
Oh, I agree entirely about rehabilitation, so long as AC is made very much aware of the seriousness of what she did. I was really responding to Screechy Monkey’s ‘Now, is it a big crime requiring serious punishment. No.’ It was a big crime that requires to be seriously addressed.
Tim,
I suppose it depends on what you mean by “big crime.” I’d put this incident a step above littering, sure. But below even some low-level property damage like vandalism, which itself is far from “big crime,” a term I would reserve for serious assaults and robberies, etc. Your comment also says that you think rehabilitation would be adequate here, so I’m not sure if you think that all “big crimes” should be treated that way, or if you’re using “big” a lot more loosely and freely than I would.
Yes, bad things could have happened from this situation. But let’s not get carried away. The vast majority of arrests, even of African-Americans, don’t involve excessive force. Calling the cops falsely on an African-American has an extra bit of nastiness to it because of the reality of police abuses, but let’s not pretend it’s the equivalent of a death threat. (The abuses are still an outrage, because there is simply no good reason for them.)
Generally speaking, we don’t punish crimes based on the harm that might possibly, conceivably have resulted. If you run a red light, or make an illegal turn, or commit some other violation that did not actually result in an accident, we don’t charge you with “attempted vehicular manslaughter” because your carelessness could have caused an accident that could have killed somebody.
And not that I think his opinion is dispositive (in fact, I’ve previously said that I don’t love his statements that he won’t cooperate with prosecution), but the birdwatcher in question doesn’t think this woman should be punished legally at all.
So I’ll stand by “not a big crime.”
Screechy, if you threaten someone with violence, you may be charged with assault even if you didn’t touch them. Is that not punishment based on the harm that might possibly have resulted? This action was a sort of assault, using the weapon of police.
Personally, though, I think this woman has been punished thoroughly already, and I commend the birdwatcher’s lack of vindictiveness: “Bringing her more misery just seems like piling on.”
It was a horrible thing to do, and she has faced severe consequences already. The police should tie a ribbon on it with some smaller charge. Filing a false police report sounds appropriate. They appear to be edging towards sentencing her to community service. I hope they can find some useful rehabilitation-oriented service.
What the woman continues to say kind of bothers me. The woman said “I’m not a racist. I did not mean to harm that man in any way.” I think that both statements are false. It’s clear she intended to harm the birdwatcher, and racism isn’t a binary state inherent in an individual. A person isn’t either all racist or zero racist, a person either goes along with racism or refuses racism on a case by case basis. Some kind of education for her might be in order, so that she could come to understand and admit “I did mean harm to that man, and I sought that harm using racism.”
From the Guardian:
‘Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance called Cooper’s complaints a hoax and noted it was lucky that no one had been injured or killed that day as a result.’
I’m afraid I cannot take Amy Cooper’s actions lightly.
Tim,
I don’t take her actions lightly, either, and I resent the implication that I do. Is there no middle ground between “taking Amy Cooper’s actions lightly” and calling them a “big crime”?
I mean, come on, you’ve said in this thread that you’re not even saying to imprison her. We seem to basically agree on what should be done here — that Amy Cooper should have a criminal conviction on her record, she should suffer some non-incarceral punishment (hopefully one that is rehabilitating if such a thing exists), and that should be the end of it.
So why are you getting so hung up on calling it a “big” crime? What term would you use to describe murder and rape? “Super duper mega crime”? I’m just trying to save my adjectives for when I need them!
Papito @10,
“Assault” is a tricky example, because it’s more an instance of where legal terminology and ordinary English usage differ. The exact definition of “assault” will vary by jurisdiction (and many jurisdictions will have degrees of assault), but you are correct that traditionally it requires only creating the apprehension of imminent offensive physical contact. The actual offensive physical contact, if it occurs, is traditionally called “battery.” But in colloquial usage, people usually take “assault” to mean “battery” and tend not to distinguish.
But to clarify my earlier comments: we do, of course, punish certain acts as crimes because of their potential to cause harm, even though no harm specifically occurred. I wasn’t trying to suggest otherwise. Assault isn’t a great example here, either, because one can argue that the harm was putting the victim in fear, even if there no actual physical damage followed. But it’s not hard to list examples: most traffic violations are based on “this is dangerous, and we want to deter it, so we punish it even when it hasn’t actually caused harm.” Drunk driving is a more serious example — even the drunk who makes it home safely can be charged. But my point remains, because we actually have different criminal offenses (and different punishments associated with them) depending on what harm occurred. Threatening to punch someone may be assault; actually punching them is assault and battery. Driving drunk but not causing an accident is one crime; driving drunk and causing someone’s death is usually some form of manslaughter.
So while “no harm done” does not equate to “no crime,” it is something we routinely take into account in deciding what kind of crime has occurred (and, as a result, how serious the punishment should be).
Screechy #13, of course I agree with you on most of that, except that I believe assault continues to be a good example here. I suspect the Manhattan DA would agree with me, and his opinion is more important than either of ours.
Consider the question of assault, without battery (let’s leave aside what “people usually take” things to mean). Is assault with a closed fist more serious than assault with an open hand? A shod foot more serious than a bare foot? A gun more serious than a stick? There’s a scale of degrees of force in battery. Is there a scale of degrees of force in assault? Where do police, armed and alerted to a black male committing violence against a white woman, fit on that scale? Somewhere above “I’m going to slap you,” I should think.
All that to say, yes, the seriousness of a crime may vary, we’re just disagreeing with you about where this assault by cop fits in that scale.
If you want a crime on the same level as littering, this isn’t one. The crime on the same level as littering was the one that caused the encounter in the first place – illegally letting her dog run around off leash.
I do not want to go on with this. Amy Cooper’s calls, asserting that she was being threatened and that the birdwatcher had tried to assault her, strike me as a very serious and dangerous misrepresentation of the facts of the case, as Cyrus Vance says. Regarding punishment, I have a rooted hatred of the whole punitive Anglo-American tradition (which nevertheless seems to become very un-punitive where bankers, CEOs et al are concerned). I think rehabilitation is the best way to go about things in all cases, if it is possible,, and in Amy Cooper’s case, she seems to have been shamed and frightened into recognising the error of her ways and seems unlikely to do the same kind of thing again, so that I do not think she needs to have the whole weight of the law brought to bear on her. A stiff fine and community service would surely be a suitable penalty in the circumstances.
Papito, I value almost anyone’s opinion more than Cy Vance’s. He’s the same lickspittle DA who declined to pursue Epstein, the Trumps, or any other celebrities or likely campaign contributors. The fact that he’s talking tough now about Amy Cooper, who it’s very politically safe to attack, or the Trumps (now that the political winds have shifted), doesn’t impress me.
But with that little rant out of the way, I don’t really take issue with your post @14 or Timothy’s @15, and am content to leave it there.