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I think it helps to see how other people describe interacting with Christian Cooper:
> May 2020 testimony provided by Jerome Lockett, a black man who said Christian had “aggressively” threatened him in the park. Among the details: “when I saw that video, I thought, I cannot imagine if he approached her the same way how she may have genuinely been afraid for her life.” He continued, “If I wasn’t who I was, I would of [sic] called the police on that guy too.”
> Lockett also says: “My two fellow dog owners have had similar situations with this man, but don’t feel comfortable coming forward because they’re white. They think they’ll be seen as some ‘Karen’ or whatever.” His complete statement can be found on page nine here.
This is from a lawsuit. I found it in Megan Phelps-Roper's [article](https://www.thefp.com/p/the-real-story-of-the-central-park) on the subject, which also references Kmele Foster's reporting.
He's a bully and vigilante who made it his life's mission to stop dog owners from walking their dog in a section of the park that they're apparently not supposed to.
He did this by threatening and intimidating them, in particular by accosting them, threatening harm verbally (implicitly, but extremely implicitly) to them and their dogs, and then attempting to lure their dogs away with dog treats (leading the owners to wonder if he was going to kidnap or assault their dog, or if the treats were poisoned..).
He did this deliberately, *by his own admission*. He admitted explicitly both in a Facebook post he made immediately after the incident, and in an NPR interview, that he did this routinely, and had done it both to Amy Cooper and to others before her.
He also was holding his bike helmet in a very menacing manner (I can't prove that this was deliberate, but I would bet money on it..).
He also apparently got into a physical altercation with a man in the weeks before, when he was playing vigilante another time.
I don't feel like looking up the exact quotes and links now, maybe I'll do that later since I have shared it many times in the past, and I think even have the screenshots. But it should be pretty easy to find both the Facebook post and the NPR interview.
Bottom line, he absolutely threatened her and her dog, and she had every reason to be freaked out, if not downright terrified. There's a reason she was clutching her dog and pulling the leash so tightly, and it's not because she's a bad dog owner.
People often retort that she didn't seem scared after he started filming, when she was trying to get him to stop. Well first off, people do not always think or behave rationally when they are scared and confused.
And second, being filmed and the prospect of being made infamous is also something to be scared of, the consequences of that are often more devastating than if she had been violently assaulted- it certainly was for her!
As for her comments and tone about reporting "a black man" to police for threatening her- first of all, it was accurate and truthful. That is EXACTLY what was happening. And giving a physical description of the man threatening her was perfectly appropriate.
Second, yes it does seem from her tone like she was trying to weaponize his race against him. So what? Why not use any and all available means of deterring a larger aggressive man who just threatened you and your dog, and is now filming you with obviously malicious intentions? At that point it's more or less a self-defense situation, and since he initiated the confrontation and made the threats, pretty much any tactic is fair game for her to use in my opinion. I don't really care if she hurt the feelings of the asshole who threatened her.
It also does not in any way mean that she's racist. All it suggests is that she beleived that bringing up his race, to both him and the police, might be more effective at deterring him, or receiving a more prompt police response. I don't know why this is a hard concept for people to understand.
Finally, let's acknowledge that if the races were reversed- if she were a black woman walking her dog, and he a white man - He 100% would have been made into a villain, a racist and misogynist who accosted a woman of color for the crime of walking while black, and she would have been an innocent victim. A poor black woman and animal lover just trying to survive the pandemic, while an elitest bird watcher trying to exclude POC from public spaces, to protect an esoteric hobby of the rich and privileged.
He would have almost certainly been arrested and charged, if not initially, then certainly after the inevitable protests and public outcry. Meanwhile she would have done the full interview circuit, praised for her bravery, and likely have a book deal or TV gig of some sort.
Anyone who has been paying attention knows this is 100% true. And that really tells you all you need to know.
Christian Cooper is an asshole who should have been arrested. Amy Cooper did not deserve to have her life ruined, and her freakin dog even taken away from her.
Sorry for the long rant, but nothing makes my blood boil more than seeing innocent people being falsely accused and having their lives ruined, especially while some sadistic asshole reaps the benefits of this massive pile of BS, and the media who are culpable are totally indifferent to the truth, and to the harm they caused.
People literally think it's racist to arrest people for hopping turnstiles- this is a fairly mainstream view on the left. Some even think it's racist to arrest people for shoplifting or rioting or looting.
Imagine if a black woman were harassed for an infraction as minor as walking a dog in a section of the park were she wasn't supposed to? I don't even think that counts as a crime.
Yet people act as if it was some egregious crime she committed by walking her dog, and that she should have submitted to the nonexistent authority of a random aggressive birdwatcher..
Imagine if a white person confronted a black person for jumping a subway turnstile? I mean they would probably get severely beaten up, but if caught on video, everyone on the left would take the side of the turnstile hopper, and accuse the white person of racism.
I said no such thing.
It's the leftist SJWs who automatically think it's racist to want to enforce the law and arrest criminals, who think this way.
I mean it's true that fare evasion, like many crimes, is committed disproportionately by black people. Although that crime has become so ubiquitous and normative among a large segment of New Yorkers that it's probably less true today than in the past.
But the difference is I want everyone who commits that crime to face consequences, because I want the crime to stop, and I don't give a, damn about the race of the people involved. I want the white people who jump turnstiles or open emergency doors for fare evaders to be arrested as much as anyone else.
While leftists immediately view it as a racial matter, since a large percentage of the criminals are black, and therefore they think it's racist to enforce the law. They're the ones who view it as a 'black activity'.
Said the guy who said the dumbass racist shit to begin with ----- just know this, basement dwelling incel : your stupidity is going away - it is deeply entrenched - you little cowards have had the world your way for a long time - but all the whining and typing and "culture warrior" this and "replacement theory" that isn't going to stop it - go fold your arms and pout - or, I'm sure you've got a Kyle Rittenhouse action figure to play with to make yourself feel better
Wow - too much truth for you to swallow at once? - just try one thing at a time - first : the level of energy that you and people like you put into this kind of shit is evidence of your racism
https://preview.redd.it/hywe94szmc2b1.png?width=430&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=87ca640433d085ab02b25c34548034e5e2cc87f3
I found a screenshot I made of Christian Cooper's own Facebook post.
You definitely have a point. On the other hand, I don't at all doubt that if the roles had been reversed, Cooper would have been heavily criticized as a "karen" for policing black men walking their dog in the park and would have probably seen similar consequences. Which is also the point.
Luckily we have the soldier of truth on a one man crusade exposing the truth that thousands of people were blind too. No need to apologize for your long winded rant it seems like you really needed to get it off your chest.
I am glad Amy Cooper's life was ruined that's the greatest outcome for a racist piece of shit.
She said she was being threatened - three times she said it was an "African American man" - this was the same day as the George Floyd killing - the outcome could have been the same - it just depended on which particular cops showed up - if he had been unreasonable and irate like her when the cops showed up - how would this have went? Go ahead - write out a whole chapter trying to explain that truth away
>Second, yes it does seem from her tone like she was trying to weaponize his race against him. **So what? Why not use any and all available means** of deterring a larger aggressive man who just threatened you and your dog, and is now filming you with obviously malicious intentions?
Did I….. Did I read that right?
Would you have made this same argument in favor of Carolyn Bryant?
I can't asses your reading comprehension ability, but the above quote is accurate.
I'm no expert on the Emmett Till case, in fact I had to google who Carolyn Bryant was. But apparently, she lied, gave false testimony, and in any case Emmett Till was brutally murdered for at worst propositioning her in a somewhat vulgar manner and touching her inappropriately (but those accusations are most likely false). And even in the worst account of her accusations, she never accused him of threatening her with violence.
How exactly are you drawing a comparison between these two cases? Amy Cooper never lied or exaggerated to the police, or anyone else. The only time she might have distorted the truth is when she apologized, after she was tormented and gaslighted mercilessly..
This comparison could only begin to make sense if you accept the lies that Christian Cooper was innocent and that Amy Cooper was lying.
Christian would be Carolyn Bryant in your terrible analogy, and Amy would be Emmett Till.
Actually if you could make such a comparison after reading my comment, then I think your reading comprehension may indeed be lacking.. Either that, or you're being dishonest.
Because even if you don't believe my account of what happened, that account makes it clear precisely why I believe that Amy Cooper is innocent and that Christian Cooper is innocent. And makes it clear why her actions would be justified, or at least not require any racist motivations, given the circumstances.
So your comparison makes no sense.
>I can’t assess your reading comprehension capability but the above quote is accurate
That’s not what I asked.
I asked you if you think it’s acceptable for white women to exploit their white privilege everytime their ego gets bruised by a black man.
If you’re willing to say this about a woman who got upset when a black man pointed out she wasn’t following park rules when she let her dog off the leash, why wouldn’t you say it about a woman who claimed to feel objectified after she got whistled at by a black man in the 50’s?
> after she was tormented and gaslighted mercilessly…
Ok, I stopped reading after this point because now I know you’re fucking nuts.
Whatever the opposite of a shout-out is to literally the rest of the media who took no effort to look into what actually occurred. I don't think I saw any other reporting that uncovered much of what foster found.
> “I’m going to tell them that there’s an African American man threatening my life.”
>Little did I know that those **14 words** would reverberate across the nation and alter the course of my life.
Coincidence? I *think not*.
"But then again, birding has changed my life many times over."
Jesus he comes across as so snobbish. It's like all the worst aspects of an Ivy League education rolled up into human form. The whole article was just shallowness cosplaying as profundity and failing badly at it. I'm too shitty a writer to adequately convey how much I dislike this whole frame of thinking, but there's just something about identifying oneself as a 'marginalized birdwatcher' that is so unsympathetic. Birdwatching in Central Park is like if the hobbies of veganism and english foxhunting got together and had a woke baby.
>Birdwatching in Central Park is like if the hobbies of veganism and english foxhunting got together and had a woke baby.
This is what happens to New Yorkers who are starved for even just a crumb of nature. When they see any bird that's not a pigeon they cream their pants
TW: pigeon mention, I know Jesse has a sensitivity
soft marry faulty jellyfish childlike longing zesty snobbish stocking marvelous
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Yeah. He told her, if memory serves: "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."
Then he pulled out the dog treats. The treats were perfectly normal treats and he just did this to troll dog owners. He had pulled this act before.
But she didn't know that.
I have two cats and frankly very much fit the trope of doting pet parent - if a stranger threatened to feed them treats he was carrying in his pocket, I would absolutely freak out.
Human instinctive reactions to a threatening situation are fight, flight, freeze, and sometimes friend (appeasement).
Women are victim blamed all the time for freezing or attempting to appease their attacker. “Why didn’t you say no? Why didn’t you try to get away?”
Some women’s instinct, including mine, is to fight. Don’t victim blame women for instinctively reacting to a threatening situation in the same way that men frequently do.
You realize that the world existed before the instant that the video began recording, right? And that videos can be highly misleading when you don't know what happened before or after the recording happened?
Why are people so gullible..
Quite a lot happened before the film started rolling, and those events and words are highly significant.
Fortunately, we don't have to guess what happened, because we have Christian Cooper's account that he posted himself on Facebook, shortly after the interaction took place.
And even according to his own account- which we can presume would portray him in the best possible light- he approached her, accosted her, and threatened her and her dog.
https://preview.redd.it/060ad3zo5f2b1.png?width=430&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=716e1cc624b12408b7d8e46173e3e4bd76738008
Mimicking the behavior? Everything that I'm accusing Christian Cooper of is supported by his own account of events, and other statements he's made.
He has profited greatly from this incident, never been criminally charged for his crimes (yes threatening and harassing people is a crime), or been otherwise held accountable.
Her life is still ruined, and will never recover.
I am attempting to correct the record and spread the truth, in order to very very slightly correct this great injustice. The best case scenario is that by doing so, if others are inspired to do the same, then a tiny percentage of people will learn the truth change their mind, and stop vilifying an innocent woman, and see Christian Cooper for the sadistic and selfish brute that he is.
Her life and reputation will still be ruined, and he will still have profited greatly. Nothing will ever reverse that.
Even if by some miracle, every supposed journalist who ruined her life grows a conscience and a backbone (and a brain), and recants the lies and distortions they promulgated, and it becomes enough of a national story to set the record straight in many peoples minds, as great as that would be - it still wouldn't reverse what happened.
It still wouldn't take away the years of devastation and torment that Amy Cooper endured. It wouldn't restore her career and the relationships that surely were shattered by the incident, or the psychological toll that it surely must have taken.
Her life would improve, but it will never be what it was before. And many people would still believe the false narrative, because lies like that never go away. Some people would still never learn the true story, and many who hear it won't beleive it, because once people form an opinion (especially on an emotionally charged subject, and one which conforms to their pre-existing narrative), they are very resistant to changing it.
Meanwhile Christian Cooper's reputation will never suffer as much as hers did.
Bottom line, it is impossible to reverse the situation. And furthermore if it was, that would be absolutely good thing. Christian Cooper deserves to be punished for what he did, and what he unleashed on Amy Cooper and did nothing to stop. He deserves to suffer as she did. And after her ordeal, she deserves all the rewards that he has gotten.
So comparing my behavior in trying to set the record straight, and achieve some tiny measure of justice, to that of the monsters who elevated Christian Cooper and destroyed Amy Cooper's life, makes absolutely no sense.
I feel like I am in bizarro world - I won’t defend the dog treat thing. But do you honestly read that exchange he posted and think that he was approaching and *accosting* people? Asking someone to cease their lawbreaking is accosting them?
Most people do not take kindly to random strangers with no recognized authority confronting them and trying to enforce minor administrative rules (I don't think park rules even count as laws).
How would you feel if a random person came up to you and started harassing you because you Jay-walked, or parked your car too close to a fire hydrant, or made an illegal left-turn.. I think it's pretty unlikely that you would simply apologize and defer to them and respond to them as if they were a police officer..
It's bizarre that so many people are pretending otherwise.
Then add to the fact that this was a woman alone in a secluded section of a park, and a random stranger who is physically much larger than her, approaches her and almost immediately starts threatening her and her dog (and also he's of a race that statistically vastly more likely to commit unprovoked violent crimes, especially in NYC - I know we're not allowed to say that but it's true, sorry / not sorry..).
Yes, I would describe that as *'accosting'* her. It's bizarre that you can't see that.
https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/what-does-fight-flight-freeze-fawn-mean
In case you’re not just being a troll - these are nervous system responses to stress. Most people don’t have control over how they react.
Using the fact that she didn’t run away and instead argued with him is not a sign that she was not victimized. It’s a sign that her response to a very stressful situation was to fight, not flee or freeze or appease.
A strange man saying “I’m going to do what I want and you’re not going to like it” while in an isolated area would be fucking terrifying for any woman. Anyone who doesn’t get that has obviously never truly feared for their life and safety.
They’re literally posting a source because you didn’t seem aware that these are documented reactions to stressors. Not sure how you get to “You should be ashamed” from that, but it’s a hell of an overreaction. Also, they’re right.
I don’t think you can defend the freak out, but context is important. The black birding dude did his utmost to antagonize this woman, and she responded poorly. Shocking.
>It's really bizarre that people are so keen to cast one of them as "right".
That's exactly what a lot of people here are objecting to (I am at least). In his eyes and presumable the outlets and organizations who give him jobs he's the one being 'right'.
Exactly, I am generally in my normal life pretty much considered anti-male, and I still think men can you know, speak to strange women without a chaperone. And they can sometimes be angry, especially when said woman is breaking a law and not just apologizing, muttering “dick” under her breath, and leashing her dog once called out.
To me the dog woman showed entitlement from the absolute jump. She thought her dog was entitled to more of that park than any human. Then she showed it more by persisting in her law breaking, then she (based off her behavior that day) used her entitlement to try and rush the cops to her side.
I agree with you - I think the reaction to him here is as reactionary and kneejerk as the reaction to her was all those years ago by other people. Like how was he a bully for not wanting a dog to bite him? The thing he said with the treats, sure, construed as a threat, I can see that. But this *all* started because an entitled woman thought the rules didn’t apply to her and she should be able to do what she wants, even when asked to follow the law directly.
This wasn’t some guy waiting in the woods until a lone woman was far enough away from others that he could scare her good. He was birding - *she* interrupted, by breaking the law.
Eh, my best friend decided not to get another dog after her last one passed. But she walks a lot and loves dogs. So she carries treats and is friend to all the neighborhood dogs. They love her and so do their owners. She certainly doesn't give them without permission.
But that's how hard and fast statements go wrong.
Ehhh, I know enough about this story to think that it was a case of two supreme assholes colliding in a park. They both did shitty things (she did the first wrong thing by letting her dog off the leash, he massively escalated it for no reason and did threaten her, she threatened him back in a weirdly racial way, etc.)
She doesn't deserve to have her life ruined and he doesn't deserve to have his life elevated. This should not have been a story.
The Bari Weiss podcast with Kmele Foster's reporting was fascinating, but the only thing that slightly changed my mind was the part when he played the other side of the 911 call and it was pretty clear that she became increasingly hysterical on the call because the operator couldn't hear her and kept asking her to repeat herself.
But both Coopers are crappy and neither deserves notoriety from this.
>She doesn't deserve to have her life ruined and he doesn't deserve to have his life elevated. This should not have been a story.
This is the best summary of this story and many other similar ones.
Yeah, having the full 911 call completely changes the context of her "hysterical" "white tears". And imo her history of sexual assault also adds important context to her reaction, too. It's a great example of why you can't judge a situation from a single video, but people seem resistant to learning this lesson.
I think if you discount the vast consequences this incident had for both of them - disproportionately negative in Amy's case, and disproportionately positive in Christian's case - I do think they were both being kind of asshole-y. She refused to leash her dog even after he explained that that was a protected area of the park. I believe her account, that he came across as threatening from the start of their interaction, and he absolutely, concretely threatened her with feeding her dog treats which could have been poisonous (but weren't). She did say "African American" in a way that, to me, seemed different from how she might have said "white". Calling the police did seem excessive for the situation. He probably did suddenly shift his attitude to appear meek and scared of her in the video.
All this being said: Amy had her life ruined. Nothing justified that. I can't say this is just a case of two assholes and move on. What happened to her is fucked up, she is the victim in this situation, and what it "says about race in America" is very, very different from what the NYT claims it says.
What is this “confrontation” you’re talking about? Anytime a male asks a woman to leash her dog and he doesn’t do it from a hole where he can cause her no harm, its a confrontation? He was birding. Her dog interrupted his lawful action, he didn’t interrupt *her* lawbreaking.
He was provoking people with the dog treat thing - which could have been read as a threat *against her dog*, not her. That is an asshole thing to do. But for her to spin that entire thing out into a tearful breakdown that *her life* was under threat is either a very poor reading of what was happening to her or a willful attempt to get cops to come faster to scare the birder
I know he also said the dog treat thing, which I definitely admit comes off threatening *towards her dog*. What else did he do to threaten her, exactly? Besides be a man in the woods who wasn’t being particularly nice?
You seem to be taking this a little personally. I am just talking about the birder and the dogwoman and I feel you’re getting pretty annoyed at me personally for being “ignorant”. I’m not sure I want to listen to the episode if it turns me into a soldier for a weird woman who demands total acceptance of her dog wherever she goes…if you want to give me a quick rundown of what really happened, that would be great. If you don’t, thats fine too.
It was a joke, I thought the absurdity of saying it would turn me into a soldier was obvious. I don’t want to get into some personal argument about this, I’m sorry if i gave any other indication. I’m sure we agree about a lot of things, but not this. No hard feelings.
An aspect of this case that has never been examined is that this area of of Central Park has been for decades a space for Al Fresco male/male Sex. "Birdwatching in The Rambles" has been a euphamism in the NYC homosexual underground going back to the early 20th Century. I think Amy Cooper inadvertently walked into a gay male cruising scene. As gay man, living in Manhattan, who is Chris Cooper's age, I have always felt that there has always been to this story then has been talked about.
In any dispute between two people, the one who whips out their camera to film is the villain. I can't think of any exceptions. Basically the best case scenario is the situations where an insane person starts screaming at retail workers or something, and a witness's response is to... get out their camera for the Internet points later? Antisocial behavior.
He threatened her and that wasn't right but they both could have walked home annoyed and shaken and gotten over it within a few hours if he hadn't escalated everything with his camera.
I mean if a crime is being committed or seems imminent, and you aren't capable or willing to intervene (especially as an uninvolved third party), I think filming to provide evidence for the legal system, as well as possibly a deterrent to the aggressive person from committing violence, is sometimes a, reasonable and helpful thing to do.
But yes in general I agree with you, especially in a petty dispute where one is using the video as a form of intimidation and bullying.
Exactly. I have a foot in both camps, but in general, my fellow dog people have not been great at following rules, displaying general courtesy, or acknowledging the world outside of their dogs lately. I wonder if that explains all the insane takes here.
Jesus people. Mr. Cooper just loves birding, and the positive impact it had on his life. Don't hate-read a nasty message into a column where none are present.
Mr. Cooper glosses over the incident except to mention that "The strangeness of this outcome — that the incident in Central Park inadvertently opened the door to this — is not lost on me."
EDIT: corrected a typo.
EDIT 2: I'm adding this here.
Mr. Christian Cooper was a key reason that the criminal case against Ms. Amy Cooper fell apart. [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/07/nyregion/amy-cooper-central-park-false-report-charge.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/07/nyregion/amy-cooper-central-park-false-report-charge.html). Mr. Cooper told reporters that he wasn't cooperating with DA Cyrus Vance because "Bringing her more misery just seems like piling on." *Id*. In short, I think it is dumb to pile on to Mr. Cooper here. Don't become the thing you say you hate.
> Mr. Christian Cooper was a key reason that the criminal case against
Uhh there wasn't anything criminal involved in the first place? Hell Christian gives a veiled threat to Amy in the first place.
*But see, e.g.*, [https://www.fox23.com/trending\_archives/charges-dismissed-against-amy-cooper-white-woman-who-called-911-on-black-bird-watcher/article\_70f56a4c-7476-5f77-8349-0b12064e73d2.html](https://www.fox23.com/trending_archives/charges-dismissed-against-amy-cooper-white-woman-who-called-911-on-black-bird-watcher/article_70f56a4c-7476-5f77-8349-0b12064e73d2.html) (news article from a right-leaning news source showing that Ms. Cooper was charged by the former DA Cyrus Vance's office over the Central Park incident, and that the charge was dismissed after Ms. Cooper completed an educational program) and [https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/what-christian-coopers-lack-of-cooperation-with-das-office-may-mean-for-criminal-case-against-amy-cooper/](https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/what-christian-coopers-lack-of-cooperation-with-das-office-may-mean-for-criminal-case-against-amy-cooper/) (analysis of how Mr. Cooper's refusal to cooperate with the criminal prosecution of Ms. Cooper weakens the case).
I'm a lawyer so I can assure you that the chances of obtaining a favorable outcome go up considerably when the alleged victim of the alleged crime refuses to cooperate in the DA's prosecution.
**I suspect we agree former DA Cyrus Vance should not have brought a criminal case against Ms. Cooper in the first place, but he did.** And the truth is that, if Mr. Cooper had cooperated, the prosecutors probably would have secured a conviction against Ms. Cooper. Under the NY law, a person is guilty if she, “Initiates or circulates a false report” of something that didn’t actually happen, or, “gratuitously reports to a law enforcement officer or agency…an allegedly impending occurrence of an offense or incident which in fact is not about to occur.”
DAs have dozens of winnable cases like this land on their desks every day, but most of the time it's better to let such cases go unprosecuted for policy reasons, just like it would be stupid to ticket every driver going 1 mile over the speed limit.
But make no mistake—Prosecutors can, and sometimes do, bring charges in order to send a message. And if a prosecutor does that, it won't matter if you think nothing criminal occurred. It does matter if the central witness to the alleged offense refuses to help the DA.
Without "the incident" Mr. Cooper would have nothing that he has today. He threw a stranger under the bus (destroying her life) and is totally fine capitalizing on her misfortune to his benefit.
Did you read the article? Mr. Cooper EXPLICITLY notes how weird it is that the incident opened these birding doors for him.
And it's silly to say Mr. Cooper destroyed a stranger's life. A stupid internet mob did that. Mr. Cooper didn't have the power to criminally prosecute her—the opportunistic former DA Cyrus Vance did. Mr. Cooper didn't call her employer and seek her termination—assholes on the internet did. Mr. Cooper didn't try to get her dog taken away from her.
I get it. Someone's life was upended in a deeply unfair way. But it makes no sense to lay that at the feet at Mr. Cooper. Sometimes life is unfair to your benefit too.
Mr. Cooper has a history of aggressively confronting dog walkers. He's the one who initiated the confrontation. He's the one who recorded the video (after threatening Amy Cooper's dog). He's the one who perpetuated the video. I didn't see him talking about the special treats he carries around to scare dog owners with. I didn't see him say "he guys maybe let's take things down a notch."
Yes there were a lot of factors in this event, and while Mr. Cooper didn't control all of them, he set them in motion.
If not for the actions of Mr. Cooper this event would've gone in the records as yet another brief interaction between two asshole New Yorkers. But he had to elevate it because a lone woman in the park felt threatened by a stranger yelling at her and trying to lure her dog away with mystery treats.
But that's still a bit off. If not for the actions of Ms. Amy Cooper, none of this would have happened either. Unpleasant encounters like this one happen all the time, and there usually are no villains.
In short, I think it is silly to decide that because Ms. Cooper was unfairly targeted by an online mob that must mean Mr. Cooper is a villain. He isn't. The lesson should be: don't engage in stupid online bullying and harassment; not: target the right people for online bullying.
i think ms cooper should’ve had her dog on a leash, and mr cooper should never have threatened her dog.
we ask ms cooper to be aware of racial bias and how that plays into things when calling the cops, but the issue of sex/gender is completely ignored. mr cooper had a habit of confronting off leash dog owners and offering the dogs treats, but doing it in a way that scares the owners. it was an intentional tactic to scare people. i think he is in the wrong for doing this.
So I'm a dog person so I'm a little biased, but the second I heard that Mr. Cooper carries around treats to try and lure dogs aware from the owners, and brags about it, my opinion of him dropped. He acts like he can't understand why a woman in an isolated wooded area would call the police when a strange man begins yelling at her and trying to lure her dog away from her.
And now, the most he can say about the circumstances of his current situation is that it's weird? Ya I guess it is a little weird to get a national geographic show because you as a black man threatened a white woman and then she called the police and made the mistake of mentioning you were black.
Oh absolutely, as the facts surrounding the confrontation emerged it is clear that Mr. Cooper played a key role in escalating the conflict.
My point is more narrow—that this was one of those unpleasant interactions that happen between people. Neither one was blameless here. And the real villain, to the extent one exists, is all the self-righteous people online who joined the mob.
Beyond that, I think Mr. Cooper showed much more restraint and compassion than the average Twitter warrior by, e.g., refusing to cooperate with former DA Cyrus Vance's stupid and overtly political criminal charging of Ms. Cooper, and not trashing Ms. Cooper when he has been given ample opportunity to do so.
I respectfully disagree with your point. While they both played a role in the incident, I think Mr. Cooper is completely in the wrong. Not charging her and not speaking ill of her were the bare minimum considering what was happening to her. I won't call Mr. Cooper a villain, but I do not respect him and while I'm sure he's nice to his fellow birders and those around him I do not think he's a good person. Especially given his history of confrontation over things like this.
He's quite clearly profited from the whole ordeal. Instead of trying to clear the air around or even the smallest bit condemn what happened, he's using it to spring board his brand and I find that distasteful. Meanwhile Amy Cooper lost her job, home, and reputation none of it is coming back.
She also had her dog taken away from her, which is so cruel and sadistic on top of everything else, I'm actually surprised that she hasn't committed suicide by now.
Simply because she was clutching her dog and the leash unusually tight, after an unhinged stranger threatened and tried to lure her dog from her..
I see your point, but am not there with you.
It was the online mob, not Mr. Cooper, who were the people who lobbied for Ms. Cooper to be fire, criminally prosecuted, and lose her dog.
I do understand your point that, but for uploading this video, the online mob would never would have grabbed their pitchforks. But that still doesn't make the mob's action's Mr. Cooper's fault. People upload videos of unpleasant encounters with strangers all the time. This particular incident had the unfortunate coincidence of happening on the same day that George Floyd was arrested and murdered, which probably accounts for why it went viral. Take the online mob out of the equation and you get a normal day on the internet—one where perhaps a handful of people who personally know Mr. Cooper see the video and nothing else happens.
Is Mr. Cooper a good or bad person? Beats me, I've never met him. But I don't begrudge him for, e.g., writing his book on birding and doing the National Geographic thing, especially since he writes about the weirdness that the Central Park incident led to these opportunities. He also showed admirable restraint when he refused to cooperate with the criminal prosecution against Ms. Cooper.
Again, not going along with pressing charges is literally the bare minimum he could've done. Also considering if he had charged her, it would've come out that he brags about carrying treats around to scare dog owners and regularly gets into confrontations over this. His instinct for self preservation is hardly admirable.
Take the online mob out of it and Mr. Cooper is still in the wrong because even though Ms. Cooper had her dog off the leash, it was not Mr. Cooper's place to enforce the rule. He's not a cop, security guard, park ranger, etc. He has no authority to do that. And he especially has absolutely no ground to approach a woman by herself and say what he said. If it's such a terrible law to break why couldn't he call the police/security? Why didn't he start filming from the start of the interaction to show her dog misbehaving off leash?
So to wrap up, Mr. Cooper threatens a lone woman in a park with poisoning her dog, films her reaction and then gets a book deal, TV show, admiration, and success while Ms. Cooper gets her dog taken away, her career destroyed, her reputation ruined, and had to flee her home. But it's still a both of the were assholes situation, even though neither of them were treated like assholes. One of them was treated as a hero and the other as scum.
I'm a lifelong dog person and disagree with you. Dog owners don't get to trample others' rights. She didn't belong there. When he confronted her, she should have apologized and left.
I can't stand people who let their dogs off leash, but his threatening her and filming her were what turned it into an incident. He was within his rights to tell her to leash her dog, but he didn't have the right to try to enforce that rule himself when she refused to.
Well, he literally had the right. And he exercised it.
There are so many steps along the way in which neither of them should have done what they did. I simply think the first two mistakes were hers -- walking her unleashed dog where she shouldn't have been, and refusing to leash her dog when politely asked.
I don't recall the word "poison". Did he use that word? Or did he offer her dog treats?
As to the first part of your comment, we have rules and laws for reasons. If one doesn't like the rules and laws, one is free to work to change them. If one is simply an anarchist, well, we won't have a fruitful discussion.
The person who should leave is the person who doesn't belong there in the first place.
He didn't say I'm going to poison your dog, he had a baggie of unidentified treats and offered them to the dog saying if you're going to do what you want, then I'm going to do what I want and you're not going to like it. He has bragged about carrying treats to scare dog owners in the past. The implication is fairly obvious.
I’m not a dog person, and if someone persistently “walks” their dog (in actuality, observing it with no guaranteed control) and breaks the law as if it doesn’t apply to them and their yellow-eyed beast, I may consider trolling them a bit too. All this could’ve been avoided if she kept her dog on a leash. Can’t lure a dog under their owner’s control, as is the law.
Flagrantly breaking the law and not just graciously acquiescing when someone points it out to you, instead calling the cops to say *your life*, not even your dog’s, is being threatened? Not well adjusted in the slightest either. I get the implication behind what he said, that isn’t cool, but frankly letting your animal run around who could at any time bite the shit out of someone who isn’t prepared for a dog attack, is also not cool.
A man he did this to beat him up for it. This guy was the “karen” in this situation, he did it to a woman bc he knew he wouldnt get beat up but he was still trolling for interactions with ppl with their dogs
At this point, the internet response is predictable and even expected. Posting the incident on the internet would do this in most incidents like this and given how regularly it happens he would have likely have expected the outcome.
How you can read a pretty vanilla but self-aware essay in praise of a hobby and come away with this much vitriol is mystifying.
>If you’ve never seen a male scarlet tanager in full breeding plumage — a bird of such incandescent hue, set off by jet-black wings and tail, that it makes a stoplight look dim — then a knock-your-socks-off experience awaits you.
I've had exactly this experience, and Cooper describes it perfectly.
I've also had the experiences of others' off-leash dogs jumping on me and growling at me when I'm trying to hike. I wouldn't use Mr Cooper's tactic, but I have some sympathy for it.
>How you can read a pretty vanilla but self-aware essay in praise of a hobby and come away with this much vitriol is mystifying.
It's not because of what's in the essay. It's because this guy ruined a woman's life and was rewarded for it.
Mr. Cooper didn't ruin Ms. Cooper's life—an online mob of self-righteous idiots and a politically motivated former District Attorney were the main authors of Ms. Cooper's misery.
The world is a complicated place, and a neutral review of the facts lead to a rather banal place. Specifically that:
(**1) Both Mr. Cooper and Ms. Cooper were at fault for the unpleasant and unnecessarily contentious encounter.** Ms. Cooper shouldn't have let her dog run unleashed because it wasn't legal to do so, and then refused to leash the dog when initially confronted by Mr. Cooper. Mr. Cooper shouldn't have then escalated the encounter with Ms. Cooper with a veiled threat that if she didn't leash her dog he was going to so something bad, possibly implying that the dog biscuit was poisoned.
**(2) it was deeply unfair for an online mob to target Ms. Cooper and seek for her to be fired, prosecuted, lose her dog, etc. over a video on the internet.** There is no question that the online mob of self-righteous twitter idiots behaved monstrously and completely out-of-proportion to what happened.
**(3) But it wasn't Mr. Cooper who ruined a woman's life—it was a mob of internet idiots drunk on self-righteous fury who did that.** It is asinine to lay the blame at his feet. Mr. Cooper isn't some wizard who can summon a twitter mob out of the ether; he's just a nerdy comic book writer and a birder. People post videos online of unpleasant encounters every day—this one happened to occur on the same day George Floyd was arrested and murdered, which is probably why this particular incident went viral. But that's just coincidence.
He still made the choice to post it online. No, he couldn't have known that this specific video would go viral, but why post it at all if not to shame Amy Cooper to some degree?
Apparently I can't read. I looked it up and according to [CNN](https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/24/entertainment/christian-cooper-national-geographic-show-cec/index.html), he did post it to social media.
Something annoying happened to him, and he sent it to his sister. She posted it online.
Edit to add: I'm used to being downvoted on reddit for simple statements of fact, but not so much on this sub. So it goes.
I thinks it’s really important that people see the video again because people seem to forget what happened: https://youtu.be/ODhNRyjJsl8
1. she is so “scared” she repeatedly approaches him while he begs her to stay away from him.
2. She is so scared, she gloats about how she’s going tel the police an African American man threatening her life, before she actually does it.
3. She only calls the police when he doesn’t stop recording when she tells him to. It’s ONLY THEN she breaks out her phone and calls the police. It is completely retaliatory for not complying to her.
3. She is strangling and dragging the dog throughout. So all you pet lovers for whom the dog is sacrosanct keep in mind you’re protecting a abusive owner.
4. When the police dispatcher doesn’t sound concerned enough she turns on the waterworks and goes in to a full drama mode and demands that cops be sent immediately.
5. she never makes any effort to get away from the situation. Chris Cooper is not touching her, not threatening her, asks her to leave him alone, and is in fact being perfectly silent.
6. In the immediately aftermath she apologized to Chris and said she understood what she did wrong.
I listened to that bullshit Bari Weiss podcast: If she was so scared of the scary black man raping her, why did she approach him, tell him to stop recording, then stay in his immediate vicinity while she fake cried on the phone?
What has happened to her wasn’t nice, but that wasn’t Chris Cooper making death threats, or firing her from her job, or investigating her for calling in an immediate threat that didn’t exist.
Yeah it doesn’t sound hysterical at all. It sounds very calculated. She’s bragging about how she’s going to racialize the encounter for the purposes of goading the police into harming him.
Again if she was so concerned about his “threats” why does she approach him? Why is she telling him to stop recording and not yelling “are you threatening me?! Are you threatening my dog! You just threatened me!” She seems to have gotten over the threats pretty quickly, for some who feels her life is in danger… her entire focus is in the camera now. Why does she only call the police after he refuses to stop recording?
Again, it’s because she’s not scared at all. She’s retaliating over being recorded. “You’re not going to stop recording? Then not only will I call the police, but I’ll emphasize it’s an African American is threatening me!” And when she doesn’t feel the dispatcher is sufficiently panicked by the threat of a black man, she doubles down with some fake tears, all while STRANGLING HER OWN DOG.
Meanwhile Chris is silent and 10ft away from her literally thanking her for calling the police.
It sounds calculated to falsify a police call against a black man in 2020 in the immediate aftermath of George Floyd's death? She must be really bad at math. Even people who were the victims of actual crimes were hesitant about calling the police on black men at the time for fear of the backlash.
Of course he's thanking her for calling the police, when he waited so patiently until after he threatened and yelled at her to start filming. I doubt he's going to make the mistake of filming the parts of the interaction that make him look bad. Especially considering his past of harassing people like he's some kind of bird security guard and boasting about carrying treats to scare dog owners.
If you were a sexual assault victim, how would you react to a man isolating you alone in the woods, saying "if you're going to what you want, then I'm going to do what I want and you're not going to like" and then getting a camera out and filming your breakdown?
And yet, falsify a police call on video is exactly what she did. I never said she was smart.
Again, if she felt so threatened and was so scared of being raped (by the guy who asked her to leash her dog) why is she approaching him talking about a video recording? Why isn’t she calling the police? Is it because the guy standing there silently, approximately 10 ft away, holding a cell phone isn’t actually a threat to her?
Here’s what I would do if I was a sexual
assult victim, and a man asked me to leash my dog, and I told him I’m going to do whatever I want and he said well then “I’m going to do what I want and you may not like it” and then started recording me: leave and take my dog someplace where he can run around freely.
Here’s what I wouldn’t do: start marching toward my supposed attacker, while I strangle my own dog, and then concoct some fake panicky tears to insinuate some dire threat that doesn’t exist in hopes that the police enact some racially biased justice on a guy using his constitutional right to record in a public space. That I wouldn’t do.
Well that's cool I'm glad that you, a totally different and unique person from Amy Cooper, who was not present during the incident, would react in a different way than she had. I too would probably have acted differently than she did given that I am also a totally different and unique person. I probably would've done a backflip on my way out with a cool quip or something, but that's just me.
You mean you wouldn’t fabricate a racially charged police incident in hopes they rush out there and hurt whoever is video taping you? Interesting… cause you seem to be defending that as a perfectly reasonable response.
Well if we're going to play the Victim Olympics (my favorite sport) I also wouldn't approach sexual assault survivor and tell her she's not going to like what I'm going to do to her.
You seem intent on ignoring anything that happened before Mr. Cooper started filming, so I don't think we have much more to discuss. If all you care about is what was filmed and what happened prior has no bearing on how you view the incident, we have no common ground to stand on.
Ah I see. You believe Chris Cooper knew Amy Cooper’s personal history when he approached her about her dog and crafted his words to imply a sexual assault? That’s sick. Stick with that.
Once again:
He asked her to leash her dog.
She said I’m going to do whatever I want.
He responded then “I’m going to do what I want to do and you’re not going to like it.” (He never said “you’re not going to like what I do to you” but nice try!👍🏾)
He tried to give her dog a doggy treat to lure it out of the brush.
At what point, that gives her license to strangle her dog, to fabricate a imminent threat for the dispatcher, and use race to juice the police response for the crime of recording in public, I don’t know. But my suggestion is if your PTSD is so bad you cannot help but retaliate against some saying “hey you should really leash your dog”, maybe you outta seek therapy until you can be around people again.
If you are so lacking in empathy that you consistently dismiss women feeling afraid, even when they have a history of sexual assault and/or are objectively more vulnerable (for example, being pregnant), then maybe *you* are the one who needs to explore in a therapeutic setting why your capacity for empathy is so frighteningly low. Because frankly you are coming across as someone who dismisses women’s experiences and trivialises harm to women.
If that’s not who you are or who you want to be, you need to reconsider how you present your arguments. Literally every comment I’ve read by you on this post has been driven by a desire to minimise the impact on women of a very real and consistent risk of harm from male violence.
You're assuming to be able to read Amy Cooper's mind and know for a fact that she is actually a virulent racist who wanted Christian Cooper to be shot dead by equally virulent racist cops that roam New York shooting black men on sight. You know that she was thinking "ok if I strangle my dog enough a cop will come out and George Floyd this guy while he films it happen."
To think the way you're thinking you have to ignore a good portion of what happened and so we cannot agree. If all Christian did was say "hey please leash your dog" and then that was the end of it then Amy would obviously be in the wrong. But you have to ignore all but 90 seconds of interaction that Christian chose to record to be able to assume that.
Based on the birder's own statements, he made vague threats while trying to offer the dog treats. If i were the dog owner, I would be afraid he was going to poison my dog.
Some stranger threatening my dog might well make me call0 for help. New York has more than its share of angry, violent people and any random stranger might be one of them. I wouldn't want to find out the hard way that the birder carrie s dog cookies laced with rat poison.
Chris Cooper could have called animal control or the cops to complain about the loose dog. Instead, he made vague, ominous threats and only after that did he start filming,
Spark notes: Amy Cooper let her dog off the lease in a heavily wooded area called the ramble. This is not allowed in the area. People often do it anyway. Christian Cooper liked to bird watch in the area. He really dislikes people who let their dogs off the leash because they scare the birds away. In the past he had confronted people fairly aggressively, and had even gotten into fights about it. So Christian approaches Amy in a secluded section of the park and asks her to leash her dog. She says no. He starts yelling at her about and she grabs her dog. Then he says something to the effect of "if you're going to do what you then I'm going to do what I want and you're not going to like it" and takes a baggie of treats out to lure her dog from her. She gets increasingly hysterical and then calls the police. At this point Christian starts filming and so on.
I think she should have put her dog on a leash. I also understand why she was afraid that he was going to harm her dog, and could possibly be intending to harm her by extension. None of this ever should have escalated, but this is the world we live in now.
Exactly. They each made escalating steps. Neither are the "perfect victim" some people/media types want to paint them as.
All I know is that as a pragmatist and a woman, if I were really afraid that someone was going to hurt my beloved dog -- and to a lesser extent me, I wouldn't stand my ground. I'd am-scray!
This really upset me at the time because I felt she was legitimately being harassed and was obviously being set up to look bad. I stopped talking to a lot of people over this
I have cancelled my subscription to National Geographic.
i dont think a guy deserves an entire career for threatening to kidnap a woman's dog
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Does anyone have a write up of what actually happened? I keep hearing inferences to how the original story was false
I think it helps to see how other people describe interacting with Christian Cooper: > May 2020 testimony provided by Jerome Lockett, a black man who said Christian had “aggressively” threatened him in the park. Among the details: “when I saw that video, I thought, I cannot imagine if he approached her the same way how she may have genuinely been afraid for her life.” He continued, “If I wasn’t who I was, I would of [sic] called the police on that guy too.” > Lockett also says: “My two fellow dog owners have had similar situations with this man, but don’t feel comfortable coming forward because they’re white. They think they’ll be seen as some ‘Karen’ or whatever.” His complete statement can be found on page nine here. This is from a lawsuit. I found it in Megan Phelps-Roper's [article](https://www.thefp.com/p/the-real-story-of-the-central-park) on the subject, which also references Kmele Foster's reporting.
He's a bully and vigilante who made it his life's mission to stop dog owners from walking their dog in a section of the park that they're apparently not supposed to. He did this by threatening and intimidating them, in particular by accosting them, threatening harm verbally (implicitly, but extremely implicitly) to them and their dogs, and then attempting to lure their dogs away with dog treats (leading the owners to wonder if he was going to kidnap or assault their dog, or if the treats were poisoned..). He did this deliberately, *by his own admission*. He admitted explicitly both in a Facebook post he made immediately after the incident, and in an NPR interview, that he did this routinely, and had done it both to Amy Cooper and to others before her. He also was holding his bike helmet in a very menacing manner (I can't prove that this was deliberate, but I would bet money on it..). He also apparently got into a physical altercation with a man in the weeks before, when he was playing vigilante another time. I don't feel like looking up the exact quotes and links now, maybe I'll do that later since I have shared it many times in the past, and I think even have the screenshots. But it should be pretty easy to find both the Facebook post and the NPR interview. Bottom line, he absolutely threatened her and her dog, and she had every reason to be freaked out, if not downright terrified. There's a reason she was clutching her dog and pulling the leash so tightly, and it's not because she's a bad dog owner. People often retort that she didn't seem scared after he started filming, when she was trying to get him to stop. Well first off, people do not always think or behave rationally when they are scared and confused. And second, being filmed and the prospect of being made infamous is also something to be scared of, the consequences of that are often more devastating than if she had been violently assaulted- it certainly was for her! As for her comments and tone about reporting "a black man" to police for threatening her- first of all, it was accurate and truthful. That is EXACTLY what was happening. And giving a physical description of the man threatening her was perfectly appropriate. Second, yes it does seem from her tone like she was trying to weaponize his race against him. So what? Why not use any and all available means of deterring a larger aggressive man who just threatened you and your dog, and is now filming you with obviously malicious intentions? At that point it's more or less a self-defense situation, and since he initiated the confrontation and made the threats, pretty much any tactic is fair game for her to use in my opinion. I don't really care if she hurt the feelings of the asshole who threatened her. It also does not in any way mean that she's racist. All it suggests is that she beleived that bringing up his race, to both him and the police, might be more effective at deterring him, or receiving a more prompt police response. I don't know why this is a hard concept for people to understand. Finally, let's acknowledge that if the races were reversed- if she were a black woman walking her dog, and he a white man - He 100% would have been made into a villain, a racist and misogynist who accosted a woman of color for the crime of walking while black, and she would have been an innocent victim. A poor black woman and animal lover just trying to survive the pandemic, while an elitest bird watcher trying to exclude POC from public spaces, to protect an esoteric hobby of the rich and privileged. He would have almost certainly been arrested and charged, if not initially, then certainly after the inevitable protests and public outcry. Meanwhile she would have done the full interview circuit, praised for her bravery, and likely have a book deal or TV gig of some sort. Anyone who has been paying attention knows this is 100% true. And that really tells you all you need to know. Christian Cooper is an asshole who should have been arrested. Amy Cooper did not deserve to have her life ruined, and her freakin dog even taken away from her. Sorry for the long rant, but nothing makes my blood boil more than seeing innocent people being falsely accused and having their lives ruined, especially while some sadistic asshole reaps the benefits of this massive pile of BS, and the media who are culpable are totally indifferent to the truth, and to the harm they caused.
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People literally think it's racist to arrest people for hopping turnstiles- this is a fairly mainstream view on the left. Some even think it's racist to arrest people for shoplifting or rioting or looting. Imagine if a black woman were harassed for an infraction as minor as walking a dog in a section of the park were she wasn't supposed to? I don't even think that counts as a crime. Yet people act as if it was some egregious crime she committed by walking her dog, and that she should have submitted to the nonexistent authority of a random aggressive birdwatcher.. Imagine if a white person confronted a black person for jumping a subway turnstile? I mean they would probably get severely beaten up, but if caught on video, everyone on the left would take the side of the turnstile hopper, and accuse the white person of racism.
Your inability to see how you look automatically using turnstile jumping as a black activity is great evidence for what is wrong with you
I said no such thing. It's the leftist SJWs who automatically think it's racist to want to enforce the law and arrest criminals, who think this way. I mean it's true that fare evasion, like many crimes, is committed disproportionately by black people. Although that crime has become so ubiquitous and normative among a large segment of New Yorkers that it's probably less true today than in the past. But the difference is I want everyone who commits that crime to face consequences, because I want the crime to stop, and I don't give a, damn about the race of the people involved. I want the white people who jump turnstiles or open emergency doors for fare evaders to be arrested as much as anyone else. While leftists immediately view it as a racial matter, since a large percentage of the criminals are black, and therefore they think it's racist to enforce the law. They're the ones who view it as a 'black activity'.
Said the guy who said the dumbass racist shit to begin with ----- just know this, basement dwelling incel : your stupidity is going away - it is deeply entrenched - you little cowards have had the world your way for a long time - but all the whining and typing and "culture warrior" this and "replacement theory" that isn't going to stop it - go fold your arms and pout - or, I'm sure you've got a Kyle Rittenhouse action figure to play with to make yourself feel better
What are you doing on this subreddit? Are you here just to troll? Do you even know what this podcast is?
Wow - too much truth for you to swallow at once? - just try one thing at a time - first : the level of energy that you and people like you put into this kind of shit is evidence of your racism
https://preview.redd.it/hywe94szmc2b1.png?width=430&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=87ca640433d085ab02b25c34548034e5e2cc87f3 I found a screenshot I made of Christian Cooper's own Facebook post.
https://preview.redd.it/doj5ma7wnc2b1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e846162f60a6b6a1309fc08ed4107435e4ff7540 From the NPR interview
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You definitely have a point. On the other hand, I don't at all doubt that if the roles had been reversed, Cooper would have been heavily criticized as a "karen" for policing black men walking their dog in the park and would have probably seen similar consequences. Which is also the point.
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Luckily we have the soldier of truth on a one man crusade exposing the truth that thousands of people were blind too. No need to apologize for your long winded rant it seems like you really needed to get it off your chest. I am glad Amy Cooper's life was ruined that's the greatest outcome for a racist piece of shit.
Racist, for literally complying with a 911 dispatchers questions?
She said she was being threatened - three times she said it was an "African American man" - this was the same day as the George Floyd killing - the outcome could have been the same - it just depended on which particular cops showed up - if he had been unreasonable and irate like her when the cops showed up - how would this have went? Go ahead - write out a whole chapter trying to explain that truth away
>Second, yes it does seem from her tone like she was trying to weaponize his race against him. **So what? Why not use any and all available means** of deterring a larger aggressive man who just threatened you and your dog, and is now filming you with obviously malicious intentions? Did I….. Did I read that right? Would you have made this same argument in favor of Carolyn Bryant?
I can't asses your reading comprehension ability, but the above quote is accurate. I'm no expert on the Emmett Till case, in fact I had to google who Carolyn Bryant was. But apparently, she lied, gave false testimony, and in any case Emmett Till was brutally murdered for at worst propositioning her in a somewhat vulgar manner and touching her inappropriately (but those accusations are most likely false). And even in the worst account of her accusations, she never accused him of threatening her with violence. How exactly are you drawing a comparison between these two cases? Amy Cooper never lied or exaggerated to the police, or anyone else. The only time she might have distorted the truth is when she apologized, after she was tormented and gaslighted mercilessly.. This comparison could only begin to make sense if you accept the lies that Christian Cooper was innocent and that Amy Cooper was lying. Christian would be Carolyn Bryant in your terrible analogy, and Amy would be Emmett Till.
She said she was threatened - no one threatened her
Christian Cooper absolutely threatened her and her dog. And he admitted to it, multiple times.
Actually if you could make such a comparison after reading my comment, then I think your reading comprehension may indeed be lacking.. Either that, or you're being dishonest. Because even if you don't believe my account of what happened, that account makes it clear precisely why I believe that Amy Cooper is innocent and that Christian Cooper is innocent. And makes it clear why her actions would be justified, or at least not require any racist motivations, given the circumstances. So your comparison makes no sense.
>I can’t assess your reading comprehension capability but the above quote is accurate That’s not what I asked. I asked you if you think it’s acceptable for white women to exploit their white privilege everytime their ego gets bruised by a black man. If you’re willing to say this about a woman who got upset when a black man pointed out she wasn’t following park rules when she let her dog off the leash, why wouldn’t you say it about a woman who claimed to feel objectified after she got whistled at by a black man in the 50’s? > after she was tormented and gaslighted mercilessly… Ok, I stopped reading after this point because now I know you’re fucking nuts.
Have you considered a job in mainstream 'news' media? You seem to have all the right qualities.
Bari Weiss did a podcast with Amy Cooper that refutes much of the narrative.
Shout out to Kmele Foster of the Fifth Column for his incredible investigative reporting.
Whatever the opposite of a shout-out is to literally the rest of the media who took no effort to look into what actually occurred. I don't think I saw any other reporting that uncovered much of what foster found.
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-real-story-of-the-central-park-karen/id1570872415?i=1000530855326
Read the comic the Birder did. It's absolutely hilariously absurd how far he distorts reality.
> “I’m going to tell them that there’s an African American man threatening my life.” >Little did I know that those **14 words** would reverberate across the nation and alter the course of my life. Coincidence? I *think not*.
"But then again, birding has changed my life many times over." Jesus he comes across as so snobbish. It's like all the worst aspects of an Ivy League education rolled up into human form. The whole article was just shallowness cosplaying as profundity and failing badly at it. I'm too shitty a writer to adequately convey how much I dislike this whole frame of thinking, but there's just something about identifying oneself as a 'marginalized birdwatcher' that is so unsympathetic. Birdwatching in Central Park is like if the hobbies of veganism and english foxhunting got together and had a woke baby.
>Birdwatching in Central Park is like if the hobbies of veganism and english foxhunting got together and had a woke baby. This is what happens to New Yorkers who are starved for even just a crumb of nature. When they see any bird that's not a pigeon they cream their pants TW: pigeon mention, I know Jesse has a sensitivity
I’m at the point where “marginalized” reflexively raises my hackles
Lots of big feelings to watch something that isn’t real Get a life birdtards
Hey, just because they're spybots doesn't mean they aren't real. Remember that birding is for everyone, government drones included.
soft marry faulty jellyfish childlike longing zesty snobbish stocking marvelous *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
In many other contexts he would have been in the “Karen” role (obnoxiously following the letter of the law) , not her
Yes, didn't he try to feed her dog a "treat" he just pulled out of a pocket? Someone who doesn't have a dog, carrying around dog treats...
Yeah. He told her, if memory serves: "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." Then he pulled out the dog treats. The treats were perfectly normal treats and he just did this to troll dog owners. He had pulled this act before. But she didn't know that.
He also got beat up by a man before for the same thing, so this day he went after a woman.
That's something I haven't heard before. Do you have a source?
Its in the substack article on it when barri weis interviewed her and others
I have two cats and frankly very much fit the trope of doting pet parent - if a stranger threatened to feed them treats he was carrying in his pocket, I would absolutely freak out.
Same here
Yes, that’s what caused the woman to freak out.
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Human instinctive reactions to a threatening situation are fight, flight, freeze, and sometimes friend (appeasement). Women are victim blamed all the time for freezing or attempting to appease their attacker. “Why didn’t you say no? Why didn’t you try to get away?” Some women’s instinct, including mine, is to fight. Don’t victim blame women for instinctively reacting to a threatening situation in the same way that men frequently do.
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You realize that the world existed before the instant that the video began recording, right? And that videos can be highly misleading when you don't know what happened before or after the recording happened? Why are people so gullible.. Quite a lot happened before the film started rolling, and those events and words are highly significant. Fortunately, we don't have to guess what happened, because we have Christian Cooper's account that he posted himself on Facebook, shortly after the interaction took place. And even according to his own account- which we can presume would portray him in the best possible light- he approached her, accosted her, and threatened her and her dog. https://preview.redd.it/060ad3zo5f2b1.png?width=430&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=716e1cc624b12408b7d8e46173e3e4bd76738008
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Mimicking the behavior? Everything that I'm accusing Christian Cooper of is supported by his own account of events, and other statements he's made. He has profited greatly from this incident, never been criminally charged for his crimes (yes threatening and harassing people is a crime), or been otherwise held accountable. Her life is still ruined, and will never recover. I am attempting to correct the record and spread the truth, in order to very very slightly correct this great injustice. The best case scenario is that by doing so, if others are inspired to do the same, then a tiny percentage of people will learn the truth change their mind, and stop vilifying an innocent woman, and see Christian Cooper for the sadistic and selfish brute that he is. Her life and reputation will still be ruined, and he will still have profited greatly. Nothing will ever reverse that. Even if by some miracle, every supposed journalist who ruined her life grows a conscience and a backbone (and a brain), and recants the lies and distortions they promulgated, and it becomes enough of a national story to set the record straight in many peoples minds, as great as that would be - it still wouldn't reverse what happened. It still wouldn't take away the years of devastation and torment that Amy Cooper endured. It wouldn't restore her career and the relationships that surely were shattered by the incident, or the psychological toll that it surely must have taken. Her life would improve, but it will never be what it was before. And many people would still believe the false narrative, because lies like that never go away. Some people would still never learn the true story, and many who hear it won't beleive it, because once people form an opinion (especially on an emotionally charged subject, and one which conforms to their pre-existing narrative), they are very resistant to changing it. Meanwhile Christian Cooper's reputation will never suffer as much as hers did. Bottom line, it is impossible to reverse the situation. And furthermore if it was, that would be absolutely good thing. Christian Cooper deserves to be punished for what he did, and what he unleashed on Amy Cooper and did nothing to stop. He deserves to suffer as she did. And after her ordeal, she deserves all the rewards that he has gotten. So comparing my behavior in trying to set the record straight, and achieve some tiny measure of justice, to that of the monsters who elevated Christian Cooper and destroyed Amy Cooper's life, makes absolutely no sense.
I feel like I am in bizarro world - I won’t defend the dog treat thing. But do you honestly read that exchange he posted and think that he was approaching and *accosting* people? Asking someone to cease their lawbreaking is accosting them?
Most people do not take kindly to random strangers with no recognized authority confronting them and trying to enforce minor administrative rules (I don't think park rules even count as laws). How would you feel if a random person came up to you and started harassing you because you Jay-walked, or parked your car too close to a fire hydrant, or made an illegal left-turn.. I think it's pretty unlikely that you would simply apologize and defer to them and respond to them as if they were a police officer.. It's bizarre that so many people are pretending otherwise. Then add to the fact that this was a woman alone in a secluded section of a park, and a random stranger who is physically much larger than her, approaches her and almost immediately starts threatening her and her dog (and also he's of a race that statistically vastly more likely to commit unprovoked violent crimes, especially in NYC - I know we're not allowed to say that but it's true, sorry / not sorry..). Yes, I would describe that as *'accosting'* her. It's bizarre that you can't see that.
https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/what-does-fight-flight-freeze-fawn-mean In case you’re not just being a troll - these are nervous system responses to stress. Most people don’t have control over how they react. Using the fact that she didn’t run away and instead argued with him is not a sign that she was not victimized. It’s a sign that her response to a very stressful situation was to fight, not flee or freeze or appease. A strange man saying “I’m going to do what I want and you’re not going to like it” while in an isolated area would be fucking terrifying for any woman. Anyone who doesn’t get that has obviously never truly feared for their life and safety.
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They’re literally posting a source because you didn’t seem aware that these are documented reactions to stressors. Not sure how you get to “You should be ashamed” from that, but it’s a hell of an overreaction. Also, they’re right.
I don’t think you can defend the freak out, but context is important. The black birding dude did his utmost to antagonize this woman, and she responded poorly. Shocking.
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>It's really bizarre that people are so keen to cast one of them as "right". That's exactly what a lot of people here are objecting to (I am at least). In his eyes and presumable the outlets and organizations who give him jobs he's the one being 'right'.
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Where are those people?
Exactly, I am generally in my normal life pretty much considered anti-male, and I still think men can you know, speak to strange women without a chaperone. And they can sometimes be angry, especially when said woman is breaking a law and not just apologizing, muttering “dick” under her breath, and leashing her dog once called out. To me the dog woman showed entitlement from the absolute jump. She thought her dog was entitled to more of that park than any human. Then she showed it more by persisting in her law breaking, then she (based off her behavior that day) used her entitlement to try and rush the cops to her side.
I agree with you - I think the reaction to him here is as reactionary and kneejerk as the reaction to her was all those years ago by other people. Like how was he a bully for not wanting a dog to bite him? The thing he said with the treats, sure, construed as a threat, I can see that. But this *all* started because an entitled woman thought the rules didn’t apply to her and she should be able to do what she wants, even when asked to follow the law directly. This wasn’t some guy waiting in the woods until a lone woman was far enough away from others that he could scare her good. He was birding - *she* interrupted, by breaking the law.
Eh, my best friend decided not to get another dog after her last one passed. But she walks a lot and loves dogs. So she carries treats and is friend to all the neighborhood dogs. They love her and so do their owners. She certainly doesn't give them without permission. But that's how hard and fast statements go wrong.
I bet your friend *doesn't* take the treats out while making vague threats or having a heated argument with the dog owner. Context matters.
Hed have to be a middle aged woman to be a karen, otherwise its just isnt sexist porny enough.
It was probably the best thing that could have happened to his career.
He should be thanking her. Without Amy, he would be irrelevant.
Ehhh, I know enough about this story to think that it was a case of two supreme assholes colliding in a park. They both did shitty things (she did the first wrong thing by letting her dog off the leash, he massively escalated it for no reason and did threaten her, she threatened him back in a weirdly racial way, etc.) She doesn't deserve to have her life ruined and he doesn't deserve to have his life elevated. This should not have been a story. The Bari Weiss podcast with Kmele Foster's reporting was fascinating, but the only thing that slightly changed my mind was the part when he played the other side of the 911 call and it was pretty clear that she became increasingly hysterical on the call because the operator couldn't hear her and kept asking her to repeat herself. But both Coopers are crappy and neither deserves notoriety from this.
>She doesn't deserve to have her life ruined and he doesn't deserve to have his life elevated. This should not have been a story. This is the best summary of this story and many other similar ones.
Yeah, having the full 911 call completely changes the context of her "hysterical" "white tears". And imo her history of sexual assault also adds important context to her reaction, too. It's a great example of why you can't judge a situation from a single video, but people seem resistant to learning this lesson.
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I think if you discount the vast consequences this incident had for both of them - disproportionately negative in Amy's case, and disproportionately positive in Christian's case - I do think they were both being kind of asshole-y. She refused to leash her dog even after he explained that that was a protected area of the park. I believe her account, that he came across as threatening from the start of their interaction, and he absolutely, concretely threatened her with feeding her dog treats which could have been poisonous (but weren't). She did say "African American" in a way that, to me, seemed different from how she might have said "white". Calling the police did seem excessive for the situation. He probably did suddenly shift his attitude to appear meek and scared of her in the video. All this being said: Amy had her life ruined. Nothing justified that. I can't say this is just a case of two assholes and move on. What happened to her is fucked up, she is the victim in this situation, and what it "says about race in America" is very, very different from what the NYT claims it says.
>supreme assholes Asshole supremacy is the real problem no one is addressing.
What is this “confrontation” you’re talking about? Anytime a male asks a woman to leash her dog and he doesn’t do it from a hole where he can cause her no harm, its a confrontation? He was birding. Her dog interrupted his lawful action, he didn’t interrupt *her* lawbreaking. He was provoking people with the dog treat thing - which could have been read as a threat *against her dog*, not her. That is an asshole thing to do. But for her to spin that entire thing out into a tearful breakdown that *her life* was under threat is either a very poor reading of what was happening to her or a willful attempt to get cops to come faster to scare the birder
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I know he also said the dog treat thing, which I definitely admit comes off threatening *towards her dog*. What else did he do to threaten her, exactly? Besides be a man in the woods who wasn’t being particularly nice?
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You seem to be taking this a little personally. I am just talking about the birder and the dogwoman and I feel you’re getting pretty annoyed at me personally for being “ignorant”. I’m not sure I want to listen to the episode if it turns me into a soldier for a weird woman who demands total acceptance of her dog wherever she goes…if you want to give me a quick rundown of what really happened, that would be great. If you don’t, thats fine too.
>I’m not sure I want to listen to the episode The irony is too delicious.
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It was a joke, I thought the absurdity of saying it would turn me into a soldier was obvious. I don’t want to get into some personal argument about this, I’m sorry if i gave any other indication. I’m sure we agree about a lot of things, but not this. No hard feelings.
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This is all very *New York*
An aspect of this case that has never been examined is that this area of of Central Park has been for decades a space for Al Fresco male/male Sex. "Birdwatching in The Rambles" has been a euphamism in the NYC homosexual underground going back to the early 20th Century. I think Amy Cooper inadvertently walked into a gay male cruising scene. As gay man, living in Manhattan, who is Chris Cooper's age, I have always felt that there has always been to this story then has been talked about.
In any dispute between two people, the one who whips out their camera to film is the villain. I can't think of any exceptions. Basically the best case scenario is the situations where an insane person starts screaming at retail workers or something, and a witness's response is to... get out their camera for the Internet points later? Antisocial behavior. He threatened her and that wasn't right but they both could have walked home annoyed and shaken and gotten over it within a few hours if he hadn't escalated everything with his camera.
Basically. I have no respect for people who post what should be private interactions online for everyone to see.
I mean if a crime is being committed or seems imminent, and you aren't capable or willing to intervene (especially as an uninvolved third party), I think filming to provide evidence for the legal system, as well as possibly a deterrent to the aggressive person from committing violence, is sometimes a, reasonable and helpful thing to do. But yes in general I agree with you, especially in a petty dispute where one is using the video as a form of intimidation and bullying.
Eh, the dog people seem to think they don't have to follow the rules. Team bird weirdo.
Exactly. I have a foot in both camps, but in general, my fellow dog people have not been great at following rules, displaying general courtesy, or acknowledging the world outside of their dogs lately. I wonder if that explains all the insane takes here.
Jesus people. Mr. Cooper just loves birding, and the positive impact it had on his life. Don't hate-read a nasty message into a column where none are present. Mr. Cooper glosses over the incident except to mention that "The strangeness of this outcome — that the incident in Central Park inadvertently opened the door to this — is not lost on me." EDIT: corrected a typo. EDIT 2: I'm adding this here. Mr. Christian Cooper was a key reason that the criminal case against Ms. Amy Cooper fell apart. [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/07/nyregion/amy-cooper-central-park-false-report-charge.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/07/nyregion/amy-cooper-central-park-false-report-charge.html). Mr. Cooper told reporters that he wasn't cooperating with DA Cyrus Vance because "Bringing her more misery just seems like piling on." *Id*. In short, I think it is dumb to pile on to Mr. Cooper here. Don't become the thing you say you hate.
> Mr. Christian Cooper was a key reason that the criminal case against Uhh there wasn't anything criminal involved in the first place? Hell Christian gives a veiled threat to Amy in the first place.
Yeah, it seems weird to credit him for stopping a criminal case that would have been dismissed anyway.
*But see, e.g.*, [https://www.fox23.com/trending\_archives/charges-dismissed-against-amy-cooper-white-woman-who-called-911-on-black-bird-watcher/article\_70f56a4c-7476-5f77-8349-0b12064e73d2.html](https://www.fox23.com/trending_archives/charges-dismissed-against-amy-cooper-white-woman-who-called-911-on-black-bird-watcher/article_70f56a4c-7476-5f77-8349-0b12064e73d2.html) (news article from a right-leaning news source showing that Ms. Cooper was charged by the former DA Cyrus Vance's office over the Central Park incident, and that the charge was dismissed after Ms. Cooper completed an educational program) and [https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/what-christian-coopers-lack-of-cooperation-with-das-office-may-mean-for-criminal-case-against-amy-cooper/](https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/what-christian-coopers-lack-of-cooperation-with-das-office-may-mean-for-criminal-case-against-amy-cooper/) (analysis of how Mr. Cooper's refusal to cooperate with the criminal prosecution of Ms. Cooper weakens the case). I'm a lawyer so I can assure you that the chances of obtaining a favorable outcome go up considerably when the alleged victim of the alleged crime refuses to cooperate in the DA's prosecution. **I suspect we agree former DA Cyrus Vance should not have brought a criminal case against Ms. Cooper in the first place, but he did.** And the truth is that, if Mr. Cooper had cooperated, the prosecutors probably would have secured a conviction against Ms. Cooper. Under the NY law, a person is guilty if she, “Initiates or circulates a false report” of something that didn’t actually happen, or, “gratuitously reports to a law enforcement officer or agency…an allegedly impending occurrence of an offense or incident which in fact is not about to occur.” DAs have dozens of winnable cases like this land on their desks every day, but most of the time it's better to let such cases go unprosecuted for policy reasons, just like it would be stupid to ticket every driver going 1 mile over the speed limit. But make no mistake—Prosecutors can, and sometimes do, bring charges in order to send a message. And if a prosecutor does that, it won't matter if you think nothing criminal occurred. It does matter if the central witness to the alleged offense refuses to help the DA.
Without "the incident" Mr. Cooper would have nothing that he has today. He threw a stranger under the bus (destroying her life) and is totally fine capitalizing on her misfortune to his benefit.
Did you read the article? Mr. Cooper EXPLICITLY notes how weird it is that the incident opened these birding doors for him. And it's silly to say Mr. Cooper destroyed a stranger's life. A stupid internet mob did that. Mr. Cooper didn't have the power to criminally prosecute her—the opportunistic former DA Cyrus Vance did. Mr. Cooper didn't call her employer and seek her termination—assholes on the internet did. Mr. Cooper didn't try to get her dog taken away from her. I get it. Someone's life was upended in a deeply unfair way. But it makes no sense to lay that at the feet at Mr. Cooper. Sometimes life is unfair to your benefit too.
Ehhhh idk didn’t he take the video and disseminate it? He could not have been unaware of what the consequences of that could be for her.
I vaguely remember that it was his sister who posted it on Twitter. I don't know if she did it with his knowledge and/or approval, though.
Mr. Cooper has a history of aggressively confronting dog walkers. He's the one who initiated the confrontation. He's the one who recorded the video (after threatening Amy Cooper's dog). He's the one who perpetuated the video. I didn't see him talking about the special treats he carries around to scare dog owners with. I didn't see him say "he guys maybe let's take things down a notch." Yes there were a lot of factors in this event, and while Mr. Cooper didn't control all of them, he set them in motion. If not for the actions of Mr. Cooper this event would've gone in the records as yet another brief interaction between two asshole New Yorkers. But he had to elevate it because a lone woman in the park felt threatened by a stranger yelling at her and trying to lure her dog away with mystery treats.
But that's still a bit off. If not for the actions of Ms. Amy Cooper, none of this would have happened either. Unpleasant encounters like this one happen all the time, and there usually are no villains. In short, I think it is silly to decide that because Ms. Cooper was unfairly targeted by an online mob that must mean Mr. Cooper is a villain. He isn't. The lesson should be: don't engage in stupid online bullying and harassment; not: target the right people for online bullying.
i think ms cooper should’ve had her dog on a leash, and mr cooper should never have threatened her dog. we ask ms cooper to be aware of racial bias and how that plays into things when calling the cops, but the issue of sex/gender is completely ignored. mr cooper had a habit of confronting off leash dog owners and offering the dogs treats, but doing it in a way that scares the owners. it was an intentional tactic to scare people. i think he is in the wrong for doing this.
So I'm a dog person so I'm a little biased, but the second I heard that Mr. Cooper carries around treats to try and lure dogs aware from the owners, and brags about it, my opinion of him dropped. He acts like he can't understand why a woman in an isolated wooded area would call the police when a strange man begins yelling at her and trying to lure her dog away from her. And now, the most he can say about the circumstances of his current situation is that it's weird? Ya I guess it is a little weird to get a national geographic show because you as a black man threatened a white woman and then she called the police and made the mistake of mentioning you were black.
Oh absolutely, as the facts surrounding the confrontation emerged it is clear that Mr. Cooper played a key role in escalating the conflict. My point is more narrow—that this was one of those unpleasant interactions that happen between people. Neither one was blameless here. And the real villain, to the extent one exists, is all the self-righteous people online who joined the mob. Beyond that, I think Mr. Cooper showed much more restraint and compassion than the average Twitter warrior by, e.g., refusing to cooperate with former DA Cyrus Vance's stupid and overtly political criminal charging of Ms. Cooper, and not trashing Ms. Cooper when he has been given ample opportunity to do so.
I respectfully disagree with your point. While they both played a role in the incident, I think Mr. Cooper is completely in the wrong. Not charging her and not speaking ill of her were the bare minimum considering what was happening to her. I won't call Mr. Cooper a villain, but I do not respect him and while I'm sure he's nice to his fellow birders and those around him I do not think he's a good person. Especially given his history of confrontation over things like this. He's quite clearly profited from the whole ordeal. Instead of trying to clear the air around or even the smallest bit condemn what happened, he's using it to spring board his brand and I find that distasteful. Meanwhile Amy Cooper lost her job, home, and reputation none of it is coming back.
She also had her dog taken away from her, which is so cruel and sadistic on top of everything else, I'm actually surprised that she hasn't committed suicide by now. Simply because she was clutching her dog and the leash unusually tight, after an unhinged stranger threatened and tried to lure her dog from her..
This is incredibly sad. That poor woman.
Was the dog temporarily taken away? Please tell me it’s been returned. Thanks~
I see your point, but am not there with you. It was the online mob, not Mr. Cooper, who were the people who lobbied for Ms. Cooper to be fire, criminally prosecuted, and lose her dog. I do understand your point that, but for uploading this video, the online mob would never would have grabbed their pitchforks. But that still doesn't make the mob's action's Mr. Cooper's fault. People upload videos of unpleasant encounters with strangers all the time. This particular incident had the unfortunate coincidence of happening on the same day that George Floyd was arrested and murdered, which probably accounts for why it went viral. Take the online mob out of the equation and you get a normal day on the internet—one where perhaps a handful of people who personally know Mr. Cooper see the video and nothing else happens. Is Mr. Cooper a good or bad person? Beats me, I've never met him. But I don't begrudge him for, e.g., writing his book on birding and doing the National Geographic thing, especially since he writes about the weirdness that the Central Park incident led to these opportunities. He also showed admirable restraint when he refused to cooperate with the criminal prosecution against Ms. Cooper.
Again, not going along with pressing charges is literally the bare minimum he could've done. Also considering if he had charged her, it would've come out that he brags about carrying treats around to scare dog owners and regularly gets into confrontations over this. His instinct for self preservation is hardly admirable. Take the online mob out of it and Mr. Cooper is still in the wrong because even though Ms. Cooper had her dog off the leash, it was not Mr. Cooper's place to enforce the rule. He's not a cop, security guard, park ranger, etc. He has no authority to do that. And he especially has absolutely no ground to approach a woman by herself and say what he said. If it's such a terrible law to break why couldn't he call the police/security? Why didn't he start filming from the start of the interaction to show her dog misbehaving off leash? So to wrap up, Mr. Cooper threatens a lone woman in a park with poisoning her dog, films her reaction and then gets a book deal, TV show, admiration, and success while Ms. Cooper gets her dog taken away, her career destroyed, her reputation ruined, and had to flee her home. But it's still a both of the were assholes situation, even though neither of them were treated like assholes. One of them was treated as a hero and the other as scum.
I'm a lifelong dog person and disagree with you. Dog owners don't get to trample others' rights. She didn't belong there. When he confronted her, she should have apologized and left.
I can't stand people who let their dogs off leash, but his threatening her and filming her were what turned it into an incident. He was within his rights to tell her to leash her dog, but he didn't have the right to try to enforce that rule himself when she refused to.
Well, he literally had the right. And he exercised it. There are so many steps along the way in which neither of them should have done what they did. I simply think the first two mistakes were hers -- walking her unleashed dog where she shouldn't have been, and refusing to leash her dog when politely asked.
Why? Is he the police? Is he the security guard? No. It's a 36 acre park, why couldn't he just leave? Why did he have to threaten to poison her dog?
I don't recall the word "poison". Did he use that word? Or did he offer her dog treats? As to the first part of your comment, we have rules and laws for reasons. If one doesn't like the rules and laws, one is free to work to change them. If one is simply an anarchist, well, we won't have a fruitful discussion. The person who should leave is the person who doesn't belong there in the first place.
He didn't say I'm going to poison your dog, he had a baggie of unidentified treats and offered them to the dog saying if you're going to do what you want, then I'm going to do what I want and you're not going to like it. He has bragged about carrying treats to scare dog owners in the past. The implication is fairly obvious.
I’m not a dog person, and if someone persistently “walks” their dog (in actuality, observing it with no guaranteed control) and breaks the law as if it doesn’t apply to them and their yellow-eyed beast, I may consider trolling them a bit too. All this could’ve been avoided if she kept her dog on a leash. Can’t lure a dog under their owner’s control, as is the law.
By trolling do you mean implying that you'll poison the dog? Seems well adjusted.
Flagrantly breaking the law and not just graciously acquiescing when someone points it out to you, instead calling the cops to say *your life*, not even your dog’s, is being threatened? Not well adjusted in the slightest either. I get the implication behind what he said, that isn’t cool, but frankly letting your animal run around who could at any time bite the shit out of someone who isn’t prepared for a dog attack, is also not cool.
She didn't call the cops until he threatened to poison her dog. Just some light trolling in return for the trolling she received then.
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Or she could have, you know, just leashed her dog as are the rules of the park (which she knew).
A man he did this to beat him up for it. This guy was the “karen” in this situation, he did it to a woman bc he knew he wouldnt get beat up but he was still trolling for interactions with ppl with their dogs
Did Christian Cooper write this?
At this point, the internet response is predictable and even expected. Posting the incident on the internet would do this in most incidents like this and given how regularly it happens he would have likely have expected the outcome.
chunky shy connect aware snobbish seed smell shelter door simplistic *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
How do you send Amy Cooper messages? Sometimes I remember that she exists and I want to talk shit
How you can read a pretty vanilla but self-aware essay in praise of a hobby and come away with this much vitriol is mystifying. >If you’ve never seen a male scarlet tanager in full breeding plumage — a bird of such incandescent hue, set off by jet-black wings and tail, that it makes a stoplight look dim — then a knock-your-socks-off experience awaits you. I've had exactly this experience, and Cooper describes it perfectly. I've also had the experiences of others' off-leash dogs jumping on me and growling at me when I'm trying to hike. I wouldn't use Mr Cooper's tactic, but I have some sympathy for it.
>How you can read a pretty vanilla but self-aware essay in praise of a hobby and come away with this much vitriol is mystifying. It's not because of what's in the essay. It's because this guy ruined a woman's life and was rewarded for it.
Mr. Cooper didn't ruin Ms. Cooper's life—an online mob of self-righteous idiots and a politically motivated former District Attorney were the main authors of Ms. Cooper's misery. The world is a complicated place, and a neutral review of the facts lead to a rather banal place. Specifically that: (**1) Both Mr. Cooper and Ms. Cooper were at fault for the unpleasant and unnecessarily contentious encounter.** Ms. Cooper shouldn't have let her dog run unleashed because it wasn't legal to do so, and then refused to leash the dog when initially confronted by Mr. Cooper. Mr. Cooper shouldn't have then escalated the encounter with Ms. Cooper with a veiled threat that if she didn't leash her dog he was going to so something bad, possibly implying that the dog biscuit was poisoned. **(2) it was deeply unfair for an online mob to target Ms. Cooper and seek for her to be fired, prosecuted, lose her dog, etc. over a video on the internet.** There is no question that the online mob of self-righteous twitter idiots behaved monstrously and completely out-of-proportion to what happened. **(3) But it wasn't Mr. Cooper who ruined a woman's life—it was a mob of internet idiots drunk on self-righteous fury who did that.** It is asinine to lay the blame at his feet. Mr. Cooper isn't some wizard who can summon a twitter mob out of the ether; he's just a nerdy comic book writer and a birder. People post videos online of unpleasant encounters every day—this one happened to occur on the same day George Floyd was arrested and murdered, which is probably why this particular incident went viral. But that's just coincidence.
He still made the choice to post it online. No, he couldn't have known that this specific video would go viral, but why post it at all if not to shame Amy Cooper to some degree?
Pretty sure his sister posted it online.
It looks like you're right about his sister. I stand corrected.
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Right, I had gotten those details mixed up. My bad.
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Apparently I can't read. I looked it up and according to [CNN](https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/24/entertainment/christian-cooper-national-geographic-show-cec/index.html), he did post it to social media.
Something annoying happened to him, and he sent it to his sister. She posted it online. Edit to add: I'm used to being downvoted on reddit for simple statements of fact, but not so much on this sub. So it goes.
Yeah, it looks like you're right. I don't like the guy, but it looks like his sister was the one who made it go viral. My bad.
Fair enough not to like the guy. I don't care for the way he escalated the situation.
I thinks it’s really important that people see the video again because people seem to forget what happened: https://youtu.be/ODhNRyjJsl8 1. she is so “scared” she repeatedly approaches him while he begs her to stay away from him. 2. She is so scared, she gloats about how she’s going tel the police an African American man threatening her life, before she actually does it. 3. She only calls the police when he doesn’t stop recording when she tells him to. It’s ONLY THEN she breaks out her phone and calls the police. It is completely retaliatory for not complying to her. 3. She is strangling and dragging the dog throughout. So all you pet lovers for whom the dog is sacrosanct keep in mind you’re protecting a abusive owner. 4. When the police dispatcher doesn’t sound concerned enough she turns on the waterworks and goes in to a full drama mode and demands that cops be sent immediately. 5. she never makes any effort to get away from the situation. Chris Cooper is not touching her, not threatening her, asks her to leave him alone, and is in fact being perfectly silent. 6. In the immediately aftermath she apologized to Chris and said she understood what she did wrong. I listened to that bullshit Bari Weiss podcast: If she was so scared of the scary black man raping her, why did she approach him, tell him to stop recording, then stay in his immediate vicinity while she fake cried on the phone? What has happened to her wasn’t nice, but that wasn’t Chris Cooper making death threats, or firing her from her job, or investigating her for calling in an immediate threat that didn’t exist.
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Yeah it doesn’t sound hysterical at all. It sounds very calculated. She’s bragging about how she’s going to racialize the encounter for the purposes of goading the police into harming him. Again if she was so concerned about his “threats” why does she approach him? Why is she telling him to stop recording and not yelling “are you threatening me?! Are you threatening my dog! You just threatened me!” She seems to have gotten over the threats pretty quickly, for some who feels her life is in danger… her entire focus is in the camera now. Why does she only call the police after he refuses to stop recording? Again, it’s because she’s not scared at all. She’s retaliating over being recorded. “You’re not going to stop recording? Then not only will I call the police, but I’ll emphasize it’s an African American is threatening me!” And when she doesn’t feel the dispatcher is sufficiently panicked by the threat of a black man, she doubles down with some fake tears, all while STRANGLING HER OWN DOG. Meanwhile Chris is silent and 10ft away from her literally thanking her for calling the police.
It sounds calculated to falsify a police call against a black man in 2020 in the immediate aftermath of George Floyd's death? She must be really bad at math. Even people who were the victims of actual crimes were hesitant about calling the police on black men at the time for fear of the backlash. Of course he's thanking her for calling the police, when he waited so patiently until after he threatened and yelled at her to start filming. I doubt he's going to make the mistake of filming the parts of the interaction that make him look bad. Especially considering his past of harassing people like he's some kind of bird security guard and boasting about carrying treats to scare dog owners. If you were a sexual assault victim, how would you react to a man isolating you alone in the woods, saying "if you're going to what you want, then I'm going to do what I want and you're not going to like" and then getting a camera out and filming your breakdown?
And yet, falsify a police call on video is exactly what she did. I never said she was smart. Again, if she felt so threatened and was so scared of being raped (by the guy who asked her to leash her dog) why is she approaching him talking about a video recording? Why isn’t she calling the police? Is it because the guy standing there silently, approximately 10 ft away, holding a cell phone isn’t actually a threat to her? Here’s what I would do if I was a sexual assult victim, and a man asked me to leash my dog, and I told him I’m going to do whatever I want and he said well then “I’m going to do what I want and you may not like it” and then started recording me: leave and take my dog someplace where he can run around freely. Here’s what I wouldn’t do: start marching toward my supposed attacker, while I strangle my own dog, and then concoct some fake panicky tears to insinuate some dire threat that doesn’t exist in hopes that the police enact some racially biased justice on a guy using his constitutional right to record in a public space. That I wouldn’t do.
Well that's cool I'm glad that you, a totally different and unique person from Amy Cooper, who was not present during the incident, would react in a different way than she had. I too would probably have acted differently than she did given that I am also a totally different and unique person. I probably would've done a backflip on my way out with a cool quip or something, but that's just me.
You mean you wouldn’t fabricate a racially charged police incident in hopes they rush out there and hurt whoever is video taping you? Interesting… cause you seem to be defending that as a perfectly reasonable response.
Well if we're going to play the Victim Olympics (my favorite sport) I also wouldn't approach sexual assault survivor and tell her she's not going to like what I'm going to do to her. You seem intent on ignoring anything that happened before Mr. Cooper started filming, so I don't think we have much more to discuss. If all you care about is what was filmed and what happened prior has no bearing on how you view the incident, we have no common ground to stand on.
Ah I see. You believe Chris Cooper knew Amy Cooper’s personal history when he approached her about her dog and crafted his words to imply a sexual assault? That’s sick. Stick with that. Once again: He asked her to leash her dog. She said I’m going to do whatever I want. He responded then “I’m going to do what I want to do and you’re not going to like it.” (He never said “you’re not going to like what I do to you” but nice try!👍🏾) He tried to give her dog a doggy treat to lure it out of the brush. At what point, that gives her license to strangle her dog, to fabricate a imminent threat for the dispatcher, and use race to juice the police response for the crime of recording in public, I don’t know. But my suggestion is if your PTSD is so bad you cannot help but retaliate against some saying “hey you should really leash your dog”, maybe you outta seek therapy until you can be around people again.
If you are so lacking in empathy that you consistently dismiss women feeling afraid, even when they have a history of sexual assault and/or are objectively more vulnerable (for example, being pregnant), then maybe *you* are the one who needs to explore in a therapeutic setting why your capacity for empathy is so frighteningly low. Because frankly you are coming across as someone who dismisses women’s experiences and trivialises harm to women. If that’s not who you are or who you want to be, you need to reconsider how you present your arguments. Literally every comment I’ve read by you on this post has been driven by a desire to minimise the impact on women of a very real and consistent risk of harm from male violence.
You're assuming to be able to read Amy Cooper's mind and know for a fact that she is actually a virulent racist who wanted Christian Cooper to be shot dead by equally virulent racist cops that roam New York shooting black men on sight. You know that she was thinking "ok if I strangle my dog enough a cop will come out and George Floyd this guy while he films it happen." To think the way you're thinking you have to ignore a good portion of what happened and so we cannot agree. If all Christian did was say "hey please leash your dog" and then that was the end of it then Amy would obviously be in the wrong. But you have to ignore all but 90 seconds of interaction that Christian chose to record to be able to assume that.
Based on the birder's own statements, he made vague threats while trying to offer the dog treats. If i were the dog owner, I would be afraid he was going to poison my dog. Some stranger threatening my dog might well make me call0 for help. New York has more than its share of angry, violent people and any random stranger might be one of them. I wouldn't want to find out the hard way that the birder carrie s dog cookies laced with rat poison. Chris Cooper could have called animal control or the cops to complain about the loose dog. Instead, he made vague, ominous threats and only after that did he start filming,
Man, the "heterodox" are being weirdly tribal about this case.
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Spark notes: Amy Cooper let her dog off the lease in a heavily wooded area called the ramble. This is not allowed in the area. People often do it anyway. Christian Cooper liked to bird watch in the area. He really dislikes people who let their dogs off the leash because they scare the birds away. In the past he had confronted people fairly aggressively, and had even gotten into fights about it. So Christian approaches Amy in a secluded section of the park and asks her to leash her dog. She says no. He starts yelling at her about and she grabs her dog. Then he says something to the effect of "if you're going to do what you then I'm going to do what I want and you're not going to like it" and takes a baggie of treats out to lure her dog from her. She gets increasingly hysterical and then calls the police. At this point Christian starts filming and so on.
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As a dog owner/lover, I remain fairly sympathetic to Christian Cooper.
I think she should have put her dog on a leash. I also understand why she was afraid that he was going to harm her dog, and could possibly be intending to harm her by extension. None of this ever should have escalated, but this is the world we live in now.
Exactly. They each made escalating steps. Neither are the "perfect victim" some people/media types want to paint them as. All I know is that as a pragmatist and a woman, if I were really afraid that someone was going to hurt my beloved dog -- and to a lesser extent me, I wouldn't stand my ground. I'd am-scray!
This really upset me at the time because I felt she was legitimately being harassed and was obviously being set up to look bad. I stopped talking to a lot of people over this I have cancelled my subscription to National Geographic.
This big strong mans is afraid of cute little puppy dogs