In the Ramble

I watched this unfolding on Twitter yesterday afternoon and didn’t post about it because…skatey-eight million people already were posting about it, and some of the facts were unclear at the time. But given the lynching “in effigy” of the governor of Kentucky on Sunday, and the death by cop of yet another black guy in Minneapolis last night, and the facts that have been clarified by now – there are things worth saying.

The tweet that everyone was talking about yesterday:

https://twitter.com/melodyMcooper/status/1264965252866641920

Slate tells the story:

An interaction between a black male birder and a white woman walking her dog in Central Park early Monday morning went viral after the woman called the police on the man when he admonished her for disobeying park rules by allowing her dog off the leash in a protected area of the park. Christian Cooper posted a video he took of the Memorial Day interaction that occurred in an interior, wooded portion of Central Park known as the Ramble that is popular with birders. Cooper came across the woman walking her dog between 7:30 and 8 a.m. and pointed out to her that unleashed dogs are not allowed in area, before asking her to put her dog on a leash. When the woman refused, Cooper says he took a dog treat out of his pocket that he carries for just such occasions with recalcitrant dog owners, and gave it to the dog. He then took out his phone and started recording.

The video begins with the woman, later identified as Amy Cooper (no relation), standing some 30 feet away. She takes her dog by the collar and then begins approaching Christian Cooper with her arm up as if to cover the phone lens asking him to stop videoing her. When he calmly refuses, asking her “please don’t come close to me,” presumably for social distancing reasons, she threatened to call the police. “Please call the cops,” he said in response. “I’m going to tell them there’s an African American man threatening my life,” she replied. “Please tell them whatever you like,” he said.

The description is carefully journalistically neutral; watching the clip is more visceral. Amy Cooper’s approaching the man feels more aggressive than that narrative conveys, because of the pandemic. Without the pandemic it might feel just bizarre, but with it it feels belligerent, like those stories of people who spit or cough at store clerks who say masks are required. Normally it seems silly to call a woman rushing up to a man “aggressive,” but these times are not normal.

Amy Cooper then calls the police on her cellphone, telling them, “I’m sorry, I’m in the Ramble. There’s a man, African American, he has a bicycle helmet. He is recording me and threatening me and my dog.” Christian Cooper, who is standing on a footpath, doesn’t move and continues to record. “I’m being threatened by a man in the Ramble, please send the cops immediately!” the woman says in an increasingly distraught voice. While she’s on the phone with police, she clicks the leash back on her dog. “Thank you,” Christian Cooper says in response to her leashing her dog, as he lowers his phone and stops recording.

And while that sequence of events is going on Amy Cooper is also holding her poor dog by his collar while standing up straight, and since he’s a cocker spaniel this means she is holding him off his front paws by the collar and strangling him. The suffocating dog is struggling desperately the whole time while Amy Cooper is too busy with her phone to notice; it’s horrible to watch. The racism is the serious issue but the casual strangling is brutal too.

The New York Police Department said when officers responded to the call neither Amy Cooper nor Christian Cooper [was] at the scene. The NYPD said no arrests were made and no complaint was filed for what was determined to be a “verbal dispute.”

That was the main thing that was unclear yesterday as far as I knew. I saw one claim that the police never showed up, so I wondered if Amy Cooper could possibly have pretended to make the call, but I didn’t feel like seeming to want to exonerate her by suggesting it, so I left it alone. (Who cares? Well there’s the whole issue of social media pile-ons, and it is a real issue. On the other hand racist murder by cop is a far bigger issue.)

Christian Cooper is a serious birder. He explains why dogs really have to be on leash in the Ramble.

Christian Cooper explained in interviews afterward that his chief concern was protecting the bird habitat in the park, which he described as “a major birding hotspot. It’s on the Atlantic flyway.” “That’s important to us birders because we know that dogs won’t be off leash at all and we can go there to see the ground-dwelling birds,” Christian Cooper told CNN. “People spend a lot of money and time planting in those areas as well. Nothing grows in a dog run for a reason.”

He carries dog treats as a last resort, because people don’t like seeing strangers feed their dogs so on goes the leash at last.

Amy Cooper, however, responded far differently, threatening not just to call the cops, but using the birder’s race as an implicit trumped-up threat when requesting a police response to being asked to follow the rules and then being recorded for not doing so. “I videotaped it because I thought it was important to document things,” Christian Cooper said. “Unfortunately we live in an era with things like Ahmaud Arbery, where black men are seen as targets. This woman thought she could exploit that to her advantage, and I wasn’t having it.”

And now her life is a mess; social media yadda yadda. But what if the cops had arrived swiftly? What if they’d arrested Christian Cooper? (Let alone killed him, which is not as far-fetched as it should be.) What if Amy Cooper had strolled home happy with her morning’s work? Would that be a better outcome?

Hardly. Social media pile-ons are a bad thing, but calling the cops on a black guy while claiming non-existent violence is much much worse.

Her employer has put her on administrative leave, and her dog is back with the spaniel rescue organization she adopted him from.

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