The saga of “Central Park Karen” appears to be ending.
According to The New York Post, misdemeanor charges filed against Amy Cooper, the white woman dubbed “Central Park Karen,” have officially been dropped after she was filmed last year in a viral video calling police and falsely accusing a Black bird watcher of “threatening” her. Cooper was facing up to a year in prison on a single charge of falsely reporting an incident in the third degree.
The incident
took place in May 2020 in New York City’s Central Park after Cooper called the police department and made a false complaint, saying a Black man was “threatening me and my dog” after the man asked her to leash her dog. The man, Chris Cooper, who is an avid bird watcher, asked the woman, Amy Cooper (no relation), to put a leash on her dog.After making the request, the female Cooper decided to argue with him. She proceeded to approach him as she drags her dog by the collar and says, “I’m gonna tell them that an African American is threatening my life.” Luckily, Chris’s sister, Melody, filmed the confrontation.
On Tuesday, Manhattan prosecutors requested to have Cooper’s case dismissed after she completed five therapy sessions, which were “designed for introspection and progress,” Assistant District Attorney Joan Illuzzi-Orbon stated at a brief virtual hearing.
“They sent her to Critical Therapy Center … who provided psychoeducation and therapy services 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,” Illuzzi-Orbon told Manhattan Criminal Court Justice Anne Swern.
Justice Swern granted the Assistant District Attorney’s request and dismissed the charges against Cooper.