Central Park birdwatching incident

Central Park birdwatching incident

The Central Park birdwatching incident was a confrontation on May 25, 2020, between Amy Cooper and Christian Cooper. Amy Cooper’s dog was unleashed in the Ramble, an area where leashing is required. She allegedly refused Christian Cooper’s request that her dog be leashed. Christian started recording Amy, who placed a call to 9-1-1.

About Central Park birdwatching incident in brief

Summary Central Park birdwatching incidentThe Central Park birdwatching incident was a confrontation on May 25, 2020, between Amy Cooper, a white woman walking her dog, and Christian Cooper, a black birdwatcher. Amy Cooper’s dog was unleashed in the Ramble, an area where leashing is required; she allegedly refused Christian Cooper’s request that her dog be leashed. Christian started recording Amy, who placed a call to 9-1-1; by the time New York City Police Department officers responded, both parties had left. The incident received wide publicity when a video of part of the incident went viral in the hours following the event. The Manhattan District Attorney announced that Amy Cooper had been charged with filing a false police report, a misdemeanor with a penalty of up to one year in jail. In 2018, New York State Assemblyman Félix Ortiz proposed legislation that would consider falsely reporting criminal incidents against people of different races and religions a hate crime.

In the U.S., the incident brought attention to the possibility that police’s unequal treatment of people of many different races happened in the United States without video proof. The Central Park incident happened the same day as the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis Police Department Officers. In Facebook commentary, television host Trevor Noah said that the confrontation between the two Coopers was an example of how white Americans and black Americans are seen by the police differently, and that this event meant that viewers could perceive Amy’s actions as deliberate, and the police’s treatment of Amy Cooper as deliberate and deliberate. The following day, Amy Cooper was fired from her job as head of the insurance firm’s investment department.