This went viral over social media a few days ago…
Amy Cooper with her free standing dog in the park comes upon Christian Cooper, who happen’s to be a black male, that was in the park watching birds…
She became rattled and confronted Christian, who has the same last name, but doesn’t know Amy….
The dog she she had was NOT on a leash ….She was asked to leash the dog, which is is the law…. In her efforts, she did seemed to have problems , and he began filming her trying control the dog…
While the view played…
We see the woman seeming to be choking the dog and threatening to call the police, which she did….
Both had every right to be where they where ….She just needed to be following the rules with the dog…
Christen, who was filming her, asked her to call the police, who showed up and found a leached dog, with its owner and no one else…
Amy wasn’t supposed to have the dog in the park walking freely., or digging holes in the ground which dogs tend to do……
She doesn’t work for the investment firm after they saw the video and action’s of their former employee…She was fired…
Christen Cooper doesn’t want Amy arrested….(She did use the term Afro-American to the police dispatcher)…And we KNOW WHY she was scared ….
And the place where she got the dog say the dog is fine…
Amy isn’t a happy camper though….
Not a good look to the rest of the world….
Amy Cooper said she would be calling the police instead.
“I’m going to tell them there’s an African American man threatening my life,” the white woman told him, pulling out her iPhone and dialing 911.
Less than 24 hours later after a video of their exchange went online, she has lost her dog, her anonymity, and her job — the latest incident in a long, too-familiar pattern of white people calling the police on black people for any number of everyday activities…
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“I don’t think there’s an African American person in America who hasn’t experienced something like this at some point,” Christian Cooper, a 57-year-old science editor, told The Washington Post in an interview. “I don’t shy away from confronting the scofflaw when I see it. Otherwise, the park would be unusable — not just to us birders but to anybody who enjoys the beauty.”….
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In a statement to CNN, Amy Cooper insisted that she did not mean to harm the African American community.
“I’m not a racist. I did not mean to harm that man in any way,” she said, adding that she was scared because she was alone in a wooded area.
Since the video was posted, she told CNN that her “entire life is being destroyed right now.”
The animal shelter where Amy Cooper had adopted the pup said that she voluntarily surrendered the dog back to the rescue while the matter is being addressed.
Despite the physical actions of the dog’s owner in the video, Abandoned Angels Cocker Spaniel Rescue Inc. said in a statement that Henry is “safe and in good health.”
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Christian Cooper, however, told the Post that he was not interested her facing “repercussions.”
“It’s unfortunate what happened,” he told the outlet. “There was definitely a lapse in judgment. But she put the dog on the leash, and I don’t need to see anything else happen to her.”…
Follow Up…
…“Any of us can make — not necessarily a racist mistake, but a mistake,” Mr. Cooper said, “And to get that kind of tidal wave in such a compressed period of time, it’s got to hurt. It’s got to hurt.”
A gray catbird darted around his hiking boots.
“I’m not excusing the racism,” he said. “But I don’t know if her life needed to be torn apart.”
He opened his mouth to speak further and then stopped himself. He had been about to say the phrase, “that poor woman,” he later acknowledged, but he could not bring himself to complete the thought.
“She went racial. There are certain dark societal impulses that she, as a white woman facing in a conflict with a black man, that she thought she could marshal to her advantage,” he said.
“I don’t know if it was a conscious thing or not,” he added. “But she did it, and she went there.”
More…