Infamous “Central Park Karen” blames Black gay birdwatcher for incident that got her “cancelled”

Amy Cooper, a white woman who became infamously known as the “Central Park Karen” after a May 2020 viral video showing her calling the police to report a Black gay birdwatcher who told her to keep her dog on a leash, has written an op-ed defending her actions and accusing the birdwatcher of terrifying and traumatizing her and of “aggressively threatening” her and other dog owners in the New York City park.

A viral video recorded by the birdwatcher, Christian Cooper (who isn’t related to Amy Cooper), showed her calling 911 to repeatedly claim that an “African-American man” was “threatening” her and her dog. During her discussion with police, she also falsely accused him of assault. After the video went viral, she was fired from her job at an investment firm and underwent five anti-racist therapy sessions to have the charges of filing a false police report dropped from her criminal record.

Related:

“Gender Reveal Karen” caught on video screaming & getting violent over Black family’s backyard party

She punched, kicked, and screamed at the Black family for not following COVID restrictions. Without a mask, of course.

In her op-ed for Newsweek, she wrote that the video was recorded during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic “when anxieties ran high.” She wrote that, on her way home, she took an unfamiliar path through “the Ramble,” a secluded area of the park.

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Seconds later, she wrote, the birdwatcher said in a booming voice, “Get out of here. You shouldn’t be here,” and told her that her dog should be on its leash. “Before recording me, Christian Cooper yelled out: ‘If you’re going to do what you want, I’m going to do what I want, but you’re not going to like it.’” He, himself, also admitted to saying these words.

During their confrontation, Christian Cooper offered her dog treats, something he does to demonstrate to dog owners how easily their off-leash animals can chase after things. Amy Cooper said she feared that he might’ve been attempting to poison her dog.

“I was a female, alone in a secluded area of Central Park, with a man yelling at me and threatening me,” she wrote in her op-ed. “As a victim of a sexual assault in my late teens, I was completely panicked for my safety and wellbeing.”

“Acting from a place of panic and vulnerability, I told Christian that I was going to call the police and what I planned to say, hoping that would be enough to dissuade him from his earlier threat,” she continued. “There were never any racial implications to my words. I just felt raw fear, and desperately wanted help.”

“Later that day,” her op-ed continues, “Christian took to Facebook to proudly describe to his followers that he instigated the encounter and boasted that he keeps a bag of dog treats to lure in off-leash dogs. Consider that for a moment. He admitted to instigating the incident.”

She also claimed that Christian Cooper had “aggressively threatened” other dog owners in Central Park, “but they don’t want to come forward because they are white, and Christian is Black. They fear being canceled — as I have been.”

She then said that her job fired her “without ever taking the time to learn the facts,” and blacklisted her career by releasing a statement distancing itself from her. She’s now unable to find work because of it, she wrote.

“I received many hundreds of threatening graphic images, death threats, and hate mail, which continues to this day,” she wrote. “I issued a public apology at the recommendation of a PR company. But it did nothing. Over three years later, I am still in hiding. I am scared to be in public. I still can’t get a job that meets my qualifications. And there have been long stretches of unemployment. All leading to thoughts of self-harm.”

“Was my fear that day in the park irrational? Was it based on racial perceptions?” she wrote. “Most people leapt to that assumption. Especially considering the encounter occurred on the same day a police officer murdered [Black Minneapolis resident] George Floyd.”

Obviously Amy Cooper forgot their was video. pic.twitter.com/PYiijTygiP https://t.co/cmunXjlX7n

— Jamie Carter (@JCTheResistance) May 26, 2021

Christian Cooper is a writer who wrote the first Star Trek comic book to feature a gay male character, Yoshi Mishima, in April 1998. He has sometimes appeared as a guest host on the Gay USA podcast. His love of birdwatching is why he said he cares so much about leashing laws, he said, since unleashed dogs can destroy birds’ ground habitats.

He said he recorded the incident because he was worried about possible violence against him.

“We live in an age of Ahmaud Arbery where black men are gunned down because of assumptions people make about black men, black people, and I’m just not going to participate in that,” he said, referring to a black man who was fatally shot in Georgia by two white men while he was jogging in a nearby neighborhood.

However, he said he did not wish for Amy Cooper to be criminally prosecuted for her actions, stating, “She’s already paid a steep price. That’s not enough of a deterrent to others? Bringing her more misery just seems like piling on.”

After their confrontation, Christian Cooper wrote a memoir and hosted a birdwatching series on National Geographic Wild TV network.

After the video went viral, Amy Cooper quickly became a symbol of how some white women use the police to oppress Black people. Numerous white women have gone viral over the past years for threatening to call police on Black people at public parks, swimming pools, and even in front of their own homes.