The white woman known as “Central Park Karen,” who hysterically called the police on a Black man bird-watching in New York’s Central Park on May 25, 2020, says she’s received death threats and still lives “in hiding.”
In an exclusive op-ed published by Newsweek, Amy Cooper excused her behavior and continued to place the blame on the Black man watching birds, who was later identified as Christian Cooper.
Video of the confrontation showed her calling the police and falsely claiming that she was being “threatened” by an “African American man” in the park. She claimed the video circulated online without “facts or context.”
“On May 25, 2020, in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, when anxieties ran high, I took my dog — whom my life revolved around — for a walk,” wrote Cooper. “I visited Central Park in the morning, during the hours when dogs were allowed off-leash. On my way
home, I chose to take an unfamiliar path, landing in ‘the Ramble,’ a secluded area of Central Park.”
“Seconds later, I heard a voice boom: ‘Get out of here. You shouldn’t be here.’ I saw a man who began yelling at me that my dog should be on his leash.”
Cooper went on to claim that she was afraid because she was “a female, alone in a secluded area of Central Park” with a man yelling at her. She also noted that she was a victim of sexual assault as a teenager.
“I was completely panicked for my safety and well-being,” she continued. “Before recording me, Christian Cooper yelled out: ‘If you’re going to do what you want, I’m going to do what I want, but you’re not going to like it.'”
Cooper claimed that after Christian tried to “lure my dog to him with treats,” she thought he was trying to poison her cocker spaniel.
“My mama-bear instincts kicked in. I immediately pulled my dog tight by his collar, fearing that something would happen to him,” she wrote, completely ignoring that she was choking her dog.
“Acting from a place of panic and vulnerability, I told Christian that I was going to call the police and what I planned to say, hoping that would be enough to dissuade him from his earlier threat,” she recalled.
The video shows Amy Cooper dragging her dog by the neck while approaching Christian as he repeatedly said, “Please don’t come close to me” while he recorded the incident.
“I’m going to tell them there’s an African-American man threatening my life,” she replied as her dog continued to struggle under her grip.
“Tell them whatever you like,” responded Christian.
The hysterical woman went on to call 911 and repeatedly told the operator, “There is an African American man threatening me and my dog!” Cooper had a straight face as she altered her voice on the video to sound like she was crying.
“There were never any racial implications to my words. I just felt raw fear, and desperately wanted help,” she wrote, explaining that the 911 operator couldn’t hear her, so she continued to give Christian’s description.
The video captured the woman’s dog in distress as it tried to escape her grip. After animal rights activists showed concern for the pooch, the dog was briefly taken away from Cooper following the incident. After the video went viral, she was also terminated from her job at an investment management company.
“Over three years later, I am still in hiding. I am scared to be in public. I still can’t get a job that meets my qualifications. And there have been long stretches of unemployment. All leading to thoughts of self-harm,” she continued, adding that people “leapt” to the assumption that her fears were based on race.
“Today, I want you to read and understand the whole story,” wrote Cooper. “Not just what the media told you. And after you assess both sides—please tell me—was my never-ending cancel-culture sentence a just verdict?”
Cooper got her answer after social media reacted to her op-ed, and it’s fair to say that she didn’t garner any sympathy with the article.
“Oh, how sad that you can’t feign being attacked by a black man and live in privacy. No sympathy,” replied one X user. One user noted Cooper’s attempt at white-washing her actions. “And so laundering of the Karen’s reputation begins!”
“You deserve everything you got, Karen. If he hadn’t recorded that, I wonder what would have happened to him. Take responsibility for your actions. You are still not sorry,” added another. “We saw the video,” replied one X user. “If she wants to talk about the aftermath, fine. But her description of the incident is gaslighting. We saw the video.”
According to The New York Times, Christian Cooper showed some empathy for Amy Cooper in the days following the incident but noted that she used her white privilege to try to intimidate him.
Cooper was charged with falsely reporting an incident, a charge supported by Christian, and she faced one year in jail. However, the charge was dropped after she completed a “racial biases” course.
“I’m not excusing the racism, but I don’t know if her life needed to be torn apart,” he said. “There are certain dark societal impulses that she, as a white woman, facing in a conflict with a Black man, that she thought she could marshal to her advantage. She went there.”
Christian currently has his own bird-watching television show, “Extraordinary Birder with Christian Cooper,” on National Geographic.
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