A bill that would make falsely reporting certain incidents a hate crime is now garnering increasing support in the wake of a white woman who called the police on a black man who had simply asked her to leash her dog in an area of Central Park known for bird watching.
The action was taken when a recorded encounter of the incident was posted on Facebook and Amy Cooper can clearly be seen and heard lying as she falsely accused a black man of threatening her life and her dog during a call to the police.
The dispute began after the man, Christian Cooper—an avid bird watcher and a board member of the New York City Audubon Society—told her that her dog needed to be on a leash.
“In the past year, we have seen many instances throughout both New York State and the country of people calling 911 on black people who are going about their everyday lives, only to be interrupted by someone calling the police for reasons that range from caution to suspicious inkling to all-out hatred,” Ortiz wrote in a statement advocating for the bill.
The New York City Commission on Human Rights is investigating Cooper who has since been fired from her job and was made to surrender the dog to the shelter he was adopted from after they viewed her handling of the dog through the ordeal.
