Amy Cooper Charged With False Reporting In Racist Central Park Confrontation

Amy Cooper has been charged with filing a false report.

Amy Cooper, the white woman who called 911 on Christian Cooper (no relation), a Black man, after he told her to leash her dog back in May, is now facing charges related to the incident.

In a report from the New York Times, Cooper was charged with filing a false report on Monday. Filing a false report is a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail. If Cooper is convicted, she could receive a conditional discharge or be sentenced to community service or counseling rather than jail time. She is scheduled to be arraigned on October 14.

The incident occurred on Monday (May 25), when Christian, a bird-watcher, encountered Cooper with her dog at a wooded area of Central Park called the Ramble. A dispute began when Christian told Cooper that her dog needed to be on a leash after noticing that he wasn't on one.

"That's important to us birders because we know that dogs won't be off leash at all and we can go there to see the ground-dwelling birds," Christian said. "People spend a lot of money and time planting in those areas as well. Nothing grows in a dog run for a reason."

From there, the dispute continued, and led to the video that Christian recorded between himself and Cooper, where the latter can be seen pulling her dog by the collar and telling Christian to stop recording. As the video goes on, Cooper tells Christian that she's going to call the cops.

"I'm going to tell them there's an African American man threatening my life," she says.

"Please tell them whatever you like," Christian responds.

The video then shows Cooper on her phone.

"There's a man, African American, he has a bicycle helmet," she says. "He is recording me and threatening me and my dog."

"I'm being threatened by a man in the Ramble," she continues before adding, "Please send the cops immediately!"

Following the incident, Cooper gave an apology to Christian via CNN, where she said she wanted to "publicly apologize to everyone."

"I'm not a racist. I did not mean to harm that man in any way," she said.

Cooper was fired by her employer, investment company Franklin Templeton, as a result of the incident. The company issued a statement on the incident on Twitter.