The woman dubbed ‘Central Park Karen’ has revealed she is still petrified and living in hiding – three years after calling 911 on an innocent black bird watcher.
Amy Cooper recalled being “freaked out” when Christian Cooper – no relation – approached her in the Manhattan park because she had been a victim of sexual assault in her teens and because she thought he was going to poison her dog.
The confrontation, which led to Amy calling the police on the Black man, happened on May 25, 2020 – the same day George Floyd was killed.
Christian Cooper, 59, was birdwatching in the Ramble area of the park at the time and had asked Amy to leash her dog in accordance with park rules.
After being sensationally fired from her Wall Street job and labeled a racist on every corner of the internet, Amy said strangers told her to slit her wrists and commit suicide, while others called her phone and said she deserved to be raped in prison.
In the photo: Amy Cooper during the meeting in Central Park. She recalled being “panicked” when Christian Cooper – no relation – approached her in the Manhattan park because she had been the victim of sexual assault in her teens.
Christian Cooper, who is not related to Amy, is a bird watcher who spends his time in Central Park and is falsely accused of threatening Amy after telling her to keep her dog on a leash
She said she knew her life was “over” when the video went viral – and she “was forced into hiding.” Three and a half years later, Amy said she still fears appearing in public.
And she said she tried to contact Christian directly but never heard back. Amy said she would “always be open to an honest, productive conversation.”
Write an opinion piece NewsweekThree years after the ordeal, Amy recalled, “I heard a voice booming, ‘Go away. You shouldn’t be here.’ I saw a man who started yelling at me to put my dog on a leash.
“Before he answered me, Christian Cooper shouted, ‘If you’re going to do what you want, then I’m going to do what I want, but you’re not going to like it.'”
Amy Cooper said she was sexually abused in her teens, and when Christian suddenly tried to offer her dog a treat, she feared he would poison the puppy.
She said, “I was a woman, alone in a remote area of Central Park, with a man yelling at me and threatening me. As a victim of sexual assault in my late teens, I completely panicked for my safety and well-being.
‘Then Christian, who didn’t have a dog, bizarrely tried to lure my dog to him with treats, which immediately raised a red flag. News stories about poisoned dogs quickly came to mind.”
Amy revealed she told the strange man she was going to call the police – and he dared her to do so.
And her repeated description of him during the 911 call was due to the lack of service, rather than an inherent need to emphasize his race, she claims.
Amy said: ‘Out of panic and vulnerability, I told Christian I was going to call the police and what I planned to say, hoping that would be enough to dissuade him from his previous threat.
‘Central Park Karen’ Amy Cooper, (pictured) who falsely accused a Black bird watcher of threatening her in May 2020
“Instead, Christian dared me to call the police. Seeing no other choice, I called 911 and described the man who threatened me. But due to the very poor service in the park I had to repeat my description of Christian several times.
“There were never any racist implications in my words. I just felt raw fear and desperately wanted help.
“There’s no such thing as a ‘Karen.’ We are all just human. Each of us deserves mercy and forgiveness. Ultimately, silencing the truth, the full story, hurts us all.”
Amy Cooper called the police and said, “There’s an African-American man threatening my life” — which happened around the same time that nationwide protests over racial injustice were starting.
Franklin Templeton, the company where she had worked since 2015, fired Amy the next day, and she was branded on social media as “Central Park Karen,” with a pejorative for a white woman with the title.
Amy then launched a wrongful dismissal lawsuit against her former employer. But in September 2022 she lost the legal battle, it was decided.
She first launched her lawsuit in May 2021, claiming she had been defamed by the bank.
At the same time, Amy was charged with a crime for filing a false police report, but this was dropped months later.
She said: ‘I still can’t get a job that meets my qualifications. And there have been long periods of unemployment. All this leads to thoughts of self-harm.”
On the other hand, Christian’s career has skyrocketed since the ordeal.
He launched his own TV show, starring National Geographic’s Extraordinary Birder, which was released on June 17.
Cooper also subsequently wrote a book for DC Comics called “It’s A Bird,” the first installment of the company’s digital anthology series called Represent, according to Open Culture.
Amy Cooper was employed by Franklin Templeton to manage their insurance portfolio
The comic book has a similar storyline to Cooper’s own meeting with Amy, but was set in a suburb instead of Central Park’s Ramble. In the story, the main character Jules encounters a white woman with her dog loose.
Cooper also has roots in Marvel and was the company’s first openly gay writer and editor.
Previously, Amy Cooper told Bari Weiss on her Honesty podcast that she was “alone in the park as a woman” and that she didn’t know if she had “any other option” besides contacting authorities and that she had “all my options investigated’.
‘I tried to leave. I tried searching for someone nearby. There was no noise, no sound,” she said in the podcast.
She later claimed on the podcast that Christian told her, “If you’re going to do what you want to do, then I’m going to do what I want to do, but you’re not going to like it.” which Christian confirmed to CBS Mornings was true.
The bird watcher had brought out dog treats to help Amy leash her dog – an old trick of bird watchers, he said. However, Amy didn’t see it that way.
She said on the podcast: “I’m trying to figure out what that means? Is that a physical attack on me? An attack on my dog? What’s he going to do?’
“I look up and he’s holding these dog treats in one hand and a bicycle helmet in the other hand and I’m thinking, ‘Oh my God, is this guy going to lure my dog over here and try to hit him with his bicycle helmet?’ ? And if I end up there, will I be hit by this bicycle helmet?”
Amy also says she was caught off guard by Christian’s change in behavior when she called the police.
“It’s really weird because he’s still standing there, you know, in the same very physical position, and suddenly out of him comes the voice of a man who has been very dominant towards me,” she says.
“Suddenly, you know, almost this victim expression, (saying), ‘Don’t come near me. Don’t come any closer,'” she says.
“Like he’s terrified of me… It’s even scarier to me now because you’re not yelling at me anymore. If you kept yelling at me, at least it was consistent, but now his whole verbal behavior has changed.”
Amy says that when she asked Christian to stop recording, he refused, adding to her anxiety.
“The moment she makes that phone call, it’s very clear that there is no physical threat to her at all,” Christian told CBS Mornings. “It’s the iPhone and the dog biscuits.”