Replay: The Real Story of “The Central Park Karen”
01:24:00 Share

This podcast is supported by FX's English Teacher, a new comedy from executive producers of What We Do in the Shadows and Baskets. English Teacher follows Evan, a teacher in Austin, Texas, who learns if it's really possible to be your full self at your job, while often finding himself at the intersection of the personal, professional, and political aspects of working at a high school. FX's English Teacher premieres September 2nd on FX. Stream on Hulu.

Hi, it's Barry, here to wish you a happy Hanukkah, a Merry Christmas, a Festivus, Kwanzaa, whatever it is that you're into. Over the next few days, we're going to replay some listener favorites from the last year, starting with what was, without a doubt, our most provocative and popular episode, a re-examination of the Central Park Karen. One of the reasons we wanted to share this one is because a commitment to telling the truth, not just repeating the convenient narrative, is core to our mission.

And it's hard to think of any story from the past year whose facts were so muddied by politics than this one. And with that, the story of the Central Park Carat. Last year, on May 25th, a cell phone video was shot in New York City's Central Park. In the video, you see a woman with a dog. She's wearing a COVID mask. And she's in a wooded area of the park called The Ramble. Would you please stop? Sorry, I'm asking you to stop. You see her notice that she's being filmed. Sorry, I'm asking you to stop. Please.

Please don't come close to me. And she walks toward the person with the camera and repeatedly tells him to stop filming her. Sir, I'm asking you to stop recording me. Please don't come close to me. Please take your phone off. Please don't come close to me. And I'm taking a picture of calling the cops. Please, please call the cops. When he refuses, she says she's going to call the cops. And the guy who's holding the camera actually encourages her to do so. Please call the cops. Then the woman says, quote, I'm going to tell them there's an African-American man threatening my life.

I'm going to tell them there's an African-American man threatening my life. Please tell them whatever you like. I'm sorry, I'm in a ramble and there is a man, African-American, he has a bicycle helmet. He is recording me and threatening me and my dog. There is an African-American man, I am in Central Park, he is recording me and threatening myself and my dog. And my dog.

I'm sorry, I can't hear you. I'm being threatened by a man in the Ramble. Please send the cops immediately. Just a few hours after these two strangers argued in Central Park, more than a thousand miles away in the city of Minneapolis, Minnesota, another cell phone video was made. And in it, you see a cop kneeling on the neck of a man named George Floyd. Please! Please!

Almost immediately, these two stories bled together into one.

This is an illustration of why George Floyd is not an isolated incident. Amy Cooper knows there's no respect for black citizenship, and she can pick up that phone and she can say an African-American man who's an innocent birder in Central Park is threatening her because she knows what's going to be visited upon him.

and what's been visited upon us for generations. It's important for us to remember that what happened to George Floyd is what Amy Cooper would have wanted to happen to Christian Cooper. What she did, it's tantamount to attempted murder. I think about Emmett Till. I think about Tamir Rice. He's not here. The elevated panic in her voice, the performance in order to heighten the situation. The performance. Amy Cooper chose to weaponize white tears.

Amy Cooper, the dog walker, she became the ultimate symbol of the Karen, the female busybody oblivious to her white privilege, using it to endanger the life of the man holding the camera, a black birdwatcher named Christian Cooper. After those 40 seconds, a video went viral. Amy Cooper's shelter dog was taken away from her. She was fired from her job. She was threatened and doxxed by thousands of strangers.

After protesters gathered outside the district attorney's office in Manhattan, she was charged with making a false police report. So-called Karen laws were proposed in New York and California, banning 911 calls that were perceived to be racist. Amy Cooper fled the country. She remains in hiding. In the meantime, Christian Cooper was celebrated on MSNBC, CBS, and CNN. He used the experience in the park as inspiration for a graphic novel that was published by DC Comics.

You made an incredible contribution at a really important moment. Cooper was even interviewed by then-presidential nominee Joe Biden. I know you didn't do this to make a national point, but the truth of the matter is people went like, whoa. But new information has come to light that raises some questions about what happened that day, and more importantly, how the story about it came to be told.

Was the treatment that Amy Cooper received in the midst of what is now commonly called our cultural reckoning on race based in reality? Or was this another case of a rush to judgment and of misplaced outrage based on a video taken out of context? Today on Honestly, Camille Foster asks those questions. He walks us through the details of the story that were left out of the media's narrative. And he sits down to talk to Amy Cooper, who has not spoken publicly since last summer.

Stay with us.

There are no other shows that are cutting straight to the point when it comes to the unprecedented lawfare debilitating and affecting the 2024 presidential election. We do all of that every single day right here on America on Trial with Josh Hammer. Subscribe and download your episodes wherever you get your podcasts. It's America on Trial with Josh Hammer.

Hi, Camille. Hey, Barry. How are you? I'm really excited to be here with you today. I am excited to be here with you as well. A little bit of nervousness and trepidation, but more so on account of the topic.

Well, for people who don't know you, you are one of the hosts of The Fifth Column, which is among my favorite podcasts. You are also, and I mean this as a compliment, one of my most stubborn friends. You just absolutely refuse to go along with the crowd. And I've witnessed where that quality can lead you to, especially over the past few weeks as you become more

I think the word would be obsessed with what happened between these two people named Cooper in Central Park last year. I'd say that's probably a fair assessment. I do bristle at the label contrarian, so anyone who's preparing to use that should not.

But the story of Amy and Christian Cooper has stood out to me as something that seems like it deserves a lot more sophisticated attention than it's earned. This encounter between these two people happened around the same time as George Floyd's death. In fact, on the same day they encountered one another and that video went viral. George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis.

And the two videos were really part of kind of a combined narrative about racial injustice and racism, systemic racism. It would kind of vault terms or phrases like white supremacy into the public consciousness in a very new and distinct way.

And there's something about understanding what happened in that park and understanding our response to it and the way it's been covered in the media that I think is very important to putting the entire racial reckoning into context and better understanding ourselves. And I think importantly, also understanding ourselves.

what it is about these moments, these viral moments that are captured on film where it's less than a minute of video footage and we all converge on a set of views about what took place and what it all means. We get to a place where we're not even willing to evaluate the facts. But I think there's something really important here. And...

A couple of weeks of obsessing over it have only strengthened that belief. So let's go back. Let's start with how this was originally portrayed in the media and what people I think largely today still believe to be true about the encounter in the park. Yeah, so in both social and legacy media, this story was an incredibly simple one. And I think a quintessential example of just how simple this story was being presented is found here in the Washington Post.

Then they described the encounter in this way. He, meaning Christian Cooper, approached the dog owner early on Monday with a request. Could she leash up the canine as park rules required? Amy Cooper said she would be calling the police instead. End quote. That's it.

And this is pretty typical of what you would find in most any national media outlet. And everyone was covering the story. And generally, when they covered it, they would place it in the context of a plethora of other, and let's call the genre being black in public stories. And the shape of these stories should be very familiar to everyone. Black person going about their daily lives, encounters some racist white person, nearly always a middle-aged woman,

who calls the police on them for no justifiable reason at all. And Rolling Stone actually published an article referring to this entire situation as kind of the 21st century Jim Crow. That's exactly how I remember it. And to be honest with you, based just on what is in this video, that is what it looks like to me on first glance. Just again, just based on the video, this guy doesn't seem to be threatening her at all.

He's the one that seems to be in a defensive posture. And she seems like she's freaking out over nothing and is actually threatening him. As a rule, when I see viral incidents like this, particularly when they're portraying the person at the center of them as evil, I think because I've been on the receiving end of a lot of hyperbolic internet bullshit, and honestly, because I've fallen for these viral videos, like most obviously in the case of Covington Catholic, I try and step back and make sure...

I'm not being pushed into the kind of mob thinking and mob rage that rules the internet and pulls all of us into it. Watching the video, even with that skepticism, she does come off as unhinged, maybe too strong a word, but very intense. And when she threatens to call the police and say an African-American man is threatening my life...

It honestly just looks like I'm seeing something that's wrong. Yeah, and I can totally see that. And I know most people I talk to about this story do precisely the same thing. And that's part of the reason that I really wanted to talk to Amy Cooper myself. All right, we are recording. So to begin, Amy, I just wanted to thank you again for talking to us. I know it's been a pretty...

extraordinary ordeal for you over the course of the last year or so? So we set up the day. We called Amy. She was not quite up to the point where she felt comfortable being on webcam. So it's me talking to a black screen. Well, Camille, I just want to say as well, thank you for letting me be on here and share my side of events. It's been a hard year of being able to have to stay silent and watch things be said across the world that have been untrue and not have that opportunity. So thank you.

Where was she calling from? We don't know. She has genuinely been in hiding for a little over a year and wasn't comfortable disclosing to me, even on background, what part of the world she's in right now. And

We began by just talking about who Amy is. So, you know, I grew up in a very small town north of the U.S., so up in Canada, like some people have mentioned. She grew up in a small town in Canada. Amazing, wonderful, loving family, supportive friends, you know, that I've had throughout my entire life. Moved to New York for a job about a decade ago, even though she says she was quite anxious about it. I remember my...

She says at first she was scared in the city.

She didn't like taking the subway. She was really out of her comfort zone. But she would eventually find some community and the place began to grow on her. And it was in New York City that she also started to really get into caring for animals and got involved in a rescue group.

At first, I started volunteering. There was a local rescue, and I would just walk dogs and walk dogs with the rescue founder in Central Park at night. You know, mixed breed rescue, a lot of pit bulls, things like that. She volunteered at different dog rescues. She fostered dogs. It is very safe to say that she became one of those dog people. And it was through one of those rescue organizations that she had been working with that she adopted her current dog, Henry. He's three years old now, and he's just amazing. Yeah.

Amy was one of those dog owners who had a whole Instagram account for her dog. He's become highly certified. He's a canine good citizen. He's done therapy level training work, support systems for children. He was working at a child autism program at one point, getting certified there just because he responds so well to people that are under stress and need help. A lot of her life...

revolved around this dog. I'm a big believer in that dogs should not be cooped up in, you know, 500 square foot apartments. So I would wake up early in the morning, you know, take him for an hour walk before work. Which meant a lot of her life revolved around Central Park. Walk him again in the afternoon. I'd come home in the evening, walk him two, three times, you know. And then COVID hits. When COVID hit, you know, I have some medical issues. I have a very severe hematological issue that

that I've had since I was in my early teens. And I have to go to the hospital pretty frequently for infusions. And it caused me to have a more compromised immune system. So Amy left the city and she took Henry with her.

And then just a few days before her encounter with Christian Cooper, she returns to the city because of her underlying medical condition. She planned to get some treatment. You know, I knew I wasn't doing well and needed to get back into New York City, get an appointment set up and probably get treatment. Though the idea of that and going to a hospital in New York was also pretty terrifying at that point in time. And...

The city has changed. The atmosphere is different. Everyone is in masks. It's almost like there was this heavy presence. I remember at the beginning, there was so much we didn't know. You know, we didn't know if it came in our mail, our food, you know, how it was spread. We didn't know if dogs could have COVID or if they can spread it to people. You know, it was almost that scary world of if you saw someone on the street, you just like got off the sidewalk and walked as far away as you could to try to make sure you didn't get COVID from them because...

The answers were still all over the map at that point in time. So on the morning of Memorial Day, the day of the incident...

She says she was headed to the park, but was uneasy about it. I headed over to the park and, you know, as I'm walking over there, I'm thinking, you know, I don't really want to go to those places I normally used to go to before COVID. I don't want him around these other dogs. I didn't want to be around people. So, you know, we just sort of went and, you know, we're doing our own thing. So Amy's visit to the park happens pretty early in the morning while dogs are still allowed off leash in most of Central Park.

And after an hour or so in the park, she starts to make her way home. But she's starting from an area of the park that she's not usually in. So she's just kind of meandering through some different areas on her way out of the park. The challenge is there's not a lot of great ways from if you're on the east side to get back to the west side. So I just chose to take this north edge path that just runs on the north edge of the Ramble. And it's part of the reason why Amy ends up in this part of the park known as the Ramble.

And it's worth pausing for a moment to just talk about the kind of place that the Ramble is. It is one of the more secluded areas of Central Park. In the, like, 70s and early 80s, it was kind of a notorious hookup spot. Like, people would meet there to have sex. It was sufficiently kind of isolated that you could do that. It was where you'd go cruising.

It's also just beautiful. Like, it's great. There are thick trees all around. But it is, it's possible to go into that park and forget that you are in the city. It's pretty well isolated. And we're walking through there. He picked up a stick and, you know, I threw it for him, you know, thinking I was going to call him back. And suddenly I heard this, you know, loud booming voice behind me, you know, screaming.

screaming something to the effect of, you know, get out of here or you shouldn't be here or something like that. A man was yelling at her. And what was your first thought?

Whenever you hear something loud, you know, you naturally just startle a little bit. And I turned around and, you know, immediately saw this man standing there looking, you know, like he's very annoyed that I'm in there and invading the space. Do you remember what you said to him at that point? You know, I remember my focus was really on getting my dog back to me. According to her, she immediately tried to get a hold of her dog. She just wanted to get away from there.

And then he utters something that sounds to me like a threat, that he's going to do something to me I'm not going to like. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa. And then she says that the man who we now know is Christian Cooper says to her, 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.

And I'm trying to figure out, you know, what does that mean? Is that a physical attack on me? Is that to my dog? Like what, what is he about to do? And before I have even figured out and can process this, he has this giant, I don't know if it was a fanny pack slash knapsack. It's on his front and he pulls out dog treats and I'm like,

What the heck is this guy doing? And he begins to call her dog. And I look up and, you know, he's holding this dog treats in one hand and a bike helmet in his other hand. And I'm thinking, oh my gosh, is this guy like going to like lure my dog over and try to like hit him with this bike helmet? And that's when she notices that he has a bicycle helmet or a Vespa helmet. And if my dog gets over there, am I going to get hit by this bike helmet if I end up over there? Yeah.

So Camille, just to step back and take stock here. She gets yelled at. She turns. She sees the guy that's yelling. The guy says that if she's going to do what she wants, then he's going to do what he wants. Then he pulls out dog treats and she notices that he's holding his helmet in a way that she feels is threatening. That's where we're at, right? Yeah. Well, right away, I just have to say that this does seem to play into a cultural trope about race. A white woman encounters a black man and she immediately becomes fearful of

because of underlying, perhaps racist views that somehow, more so than other men, black men in particular, are dominant or dangerous or particularly aggressive. Right. Certainly some people would leap to that conclusion. But for this, we really don't have to rely solely on Amy Cooper's account. Christian Cooper, prior to this entire thing going viral, he wrote a detailed account of what he remembered happening on his own Facebook page.

where he describes the fact that he is the person who instigated this encounter with Amy Cooper. He also includes details there that make it clear that he did, in fact, threaten her. Here's what Christian writes happened that morning. Sandra Park, this morning, this woman's dog is tearing through the planting in the ramble. Me, ma'am, dogs in the ramble have to be on leash at all times. The sign is right there. Her, the dog runs are closed. He needs his exercise. Me, ma'am,

All you have to do is take him to the other side of the drive, outside the ramble. Her. It's too dangerous. Me. Look, 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. Her. What's that? Me. To the dog. Come here, puppy. Then, I pull out the dog treats I carry, just for such intransigence. I didn't even get a chance to toss any treats to the pooch before Karen scrambles to grab the dog.

Now, two things immediately stick out to me about Christian Cooper's account of what happened. The first is that he acknowledges that what Amy said was in fact true, that he did threaten her. Look, 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. But Christian's post also includes another important bit of context. I pulled out the dog treats I carry just for such intransigence.

This is significant because it tells us that this isn't the first time Christian Cooper has been involved in a conflict like this in Central Park. And as it turns out, this is not the first time his actions have caused people to find him threatening. More with Camille Foster and Amy Cooper after this.

Before we get into the details, Camille, help me understand why Christian Cooper's history of conflict in Central Park would matter to this story vis-a-vis Amy Cooper at all. Because when she encounters him, she doesn't know anything about who he is. So it's not as if that history helps explain her fear or her reaction to him in the moment.

No, exactly. That's right. Amy didn't know about this at the time. But in the public narrative that most people have encountered, Amy's fear is always presented as irrational or unjustified or totally performative. In short, we're told that she is definitely lying. But if there is a documented history of similar incidents playing out in similar ways between Christian Cooper and other people in the park—

then we have a better basis from which we can make an assessment as to whether or not Amy's account of his behavior is credible.

In other words, if multiple people have independently had the same conflict with the same person and felt similarly threatened, we have less reason to believe that she is exaggerating or inventing things here. So to start, maybe you could do me a favor and just say your name and if you're comfortable with it. And I think we know the city where you reside. Hi, I'm Michael McDowell.

I am a city reporter at West Side Rag on the Upper West Side in New York City. So in the course of looking into the story, I ended up calling a bunch of different journalists who cover New York City. And I stumbled across one journalist at a publication called The West Side Rag. I would say if there's a beat that I have, it's like kind of an old school Weather Soul city reporter. I like to walk the streets and find stories.

And that's really my favorite thing. And he gave me a broader understanding of the context for this entire conflict. I actually first heard about the conflict between

birders, and we'll call them dog people. People who have dogs. Dog people. And this actually goes back to early 2019. And I was writing a story about some neighbors who are very interested in urban naturalism, urban naturalists. And

I was at a gathering of urban naturalists and, you know, one of the fun things about being a community reporter is that you get to get involved in the gossip and gossip is really the stuff of life, you know? And so there at toward the end of the meeting, these, these two folks are discussing this real problem of off leash dogs in the Ramble, which is in Central Park. One said to another, well, I know somebody who's really figured out something to do about this.

And what he does is he carries some treats. He asked the owner to leash the dog. And of course, the owner doesn't. And then he pulls out the treats and calls the dog over. And then they put a leash on the dog real fast. And there was some chuckling. And somebody said, is that legal? And I remember at the time, I was just cracking up because I was like,

New York City has room for everybody. I mean, you know, who would think of doing this? And I remember it was like a like a story I told friends over drinks for a while. Like there's there are birders in the park who will try to feed dog owners treats if they don't lease their dogs. Like, can you imagine that? Yeah.

So it turns out that in Central Park, but also in parks in Chicago and all across the country, there have been longstanding feuds between bird watchers and people who walk their dogs off leash.

And going back to at least 2015, you can find published accounts of people getting into fights and shouting matches and even calling the police on each other. So this is not a conflict that's just between Amy and Christian Cooper. This is a conflict between like essentially two species of park people. The people that care about the birds and the people that care about the dogs. Yeah. Yeah. When this all went down, it was late May 2020 and New Yorkers

I mean, we were all going insane. And in addition to telling me about this conflict between the birders and the dog people, I think what Michael really did was just kind of transport me back to that particular time in New York City. It was a mix of terror because at that time, you know, now we've gotten accustomed to this, but at that time you really thought like, oh my God, I could get this and die, right?

We didn't know yet how serious or not serious it was. And people were dying. I mean, I had neighbors who died. I had a couple of friends who died.

You were hearing sirens, ambulance sirens echo throughout the city. And that is one of my memories of the pandemic is looking out the window of my apartment and looking down the canyons toward Midtown, the canyons of the avenues, and seeing red sirens flashing up against the buildings. So everybody was like real tense. But also there was a field hospital set up in Central Park, not far from where the Cooper incident occurred. So there were literally like

I remember walking through with my press pass and seeing people being treated for COVID-19 in Central Park in tents, which was just bizarre. So you have all these tense New Yorkers who are not only terrified, but have been cooped up in their apartments.

And people start flooding into the parks, like especially Central Park. And in the days leading up to it on one of my walks, you know, I had seen a few shouting matches. And I remember getting home and talking to my significant other and being like, wow, it's tense out there. Like the city is the city. People are intense right now.

And some of those tensions that Michael is talking about, well, they showed up in Zoom recordings of meetings for a group called Community Board 7, including this one, where Christian Cooper appeared just days before his conflict with Amy Cooper in the park. So welcome, everyone, to our May meeting of the Parks and Environment Committee. I'm Elizabeth Caputo, former chairperson.

Community Board 7 is the local governing body that oversees this area of Central Park. We are still seeing a pretty high percentage of runners who are not wearing masks. It incites a little bit of anger. We are hearing some interactions that are not at all pleasant. And in this meeting, they are talking about various conflicts that are emerging throughout the park because it's overcrowded and because people are breaking the new COVID rules. I'm concerned also with the people running and bicycling

There is much less mask participation by those individuals and much more risk. People aren't wearing masks at certain points in the park. People are cycling in the wrong lanes. People are more inclined to walk in the street and encounter cyclists. And yes. Unleashed dogs where there should not be is all over the parks. Dog owners are walking their dogs off-leash in the wrong area of the park. Chris Cooper?

Hi, guys. First of all, thanks for doing this. And one of the people there to talk about the dog problems in the park is none other than Christian Cooper. One of the unintended side effects of the entire pandemic situation with people adopting dogs and people taking their dogs out because they have to be walked is that we have now sort of a byproduct epidemic of unleashed dogs in protected areas.

And I want to preface this by saying this is not anti-dog. I grew up with an English Cocker Spaniel and I love dogs. Don't put that out there because my rep as a dog hater serves me well in the park. And in the meeting, Christian Cooper talks about how he's been making videos of dog walkers walking their dogs off leash in the wrong areas of the park and how he's been using different tactics to get them to be more compliant and how it's earned him a reputation in the park.

And he specifically says... It's getting super ugly between birders and unleashed dog walkers. I've been assaulted twice so far this spring. People actually putting their hands on me, which really surprises me because I'm not a small guy. But apparently people are going a little bit crazy being pooped up. That he's been assaulted twice by other dog owners just that spring.

And again, this meeting is occurring just days before Amy and Christian Cooper will meet in Central Park.

So it would be ideal if we could get some enforcement, particularly on strawberry fields, which I've been told by some dog walkers is actually a dog run. I'm like, no, not really. Also in the Ramble, there are two particular spots where there are open fields and people see them and they think this is a place for me to play catch with my dog. And I'm like, no, this is the Ramble. Dogs have to be unleashed. And he goes on to say in this very same meeting that he wants to see more law enforcement in the park.

more of a police presence to enforce the rules. I'm wondering what we can get for enforcement. It's also important for the dogs. Christian Cooper claims that he's been assaulted by dog walkers in the park. Do we know anything more about these people? Were you able to track any of them down?

Well, he didn't identify the two people who assaulted him specifically. But I was able to track down people who claimed to have had encounters with Christian Cooper in the park in the months and weeks before his encounter with Amy Cooper. And the stories that they told me were all eerily similar to the account that Amy gives. Down to the detail of Christian Cooper having this bike helmet that he's holding in this intimidating way.

And while none of these people were actually comfortable talking to me about this on the record, we do have a written statement from one person, a man named Jerome Lockett, as he describes himself in a letter he wrote at the time, which he sent to NBC and a number of other media outlets. He is a 30-year-old African-American dog owner who...

who had previously encountered Christian Cooper, who Christian had yelled at in the park, instructing him to leash his dog. And as Jerome tried to walk away from Christian, Christian pursued him. And Christian attempted to lure his dog away with dog treats, just as he had with Amy. And even further, Jerome felt threatened. And he asks him to stop.

Christian won't stop. And eventually there is a physical altercation. Jerome pushes Christian to the ground and Christian screams for someone to call the police. But the encounter pretty much ends there. Jerome walks on with his dog and that is about the end of it. And he ends his written statement with this quote. And I think this is relevant. He says, my two fellow dog owners had similar situations with this man, but don't feel comfortable coming forward because they are white.

They think they'll be seen as some Karen or whatever. So this is the pattern that emerged from the conversations I had with these folks. First, Christian Cooper was yelling at people and approaching them in a way that made them feel scared. And then he'd say something about doing what he wanted to do and that they wouldn't like it.

Then he'd try to lure their dogs away from them, which he says already in his own Facebook transcript that this was something he would do with some regularity. And then there's this detail about him gripping the bike helmet in a way that made them feel threatened for their safety or the safety of their dog. It's kind of amazing that they all have that exact same experience. But I guess I'm like, go back to the fact that Amy wouldn't have known any of that history in that day in the park.

No, of course. All Amy knows is what she is experiencing in that moment. But of course, like anyone else, she brings her own history into that experience. And she says that the circumstance in the ramble that day brought her back to a horrible experience that she had had in college.

when she was the victim of a sexual assault. I think, you know, when you're 19 years old, you feel like, you know, I shouldn't have dressed so provocatively. I shouldn't have walked home alone. I shouldn't have, you know, drank so much. And she said that being there, isolated in this wooded area, alone with a man who was threatening to do something to her that she wouldn't like...

all of this history was just brought back to mind. And that was all playing a role in her reaction. So this is the part of the story where I cannot help but think about Me Too and how over the past few years, we have become so much more aware and sensitive to the power dynamics between men and women. And, you know, all of these stories over the past few years about tiny things have become major stories. And in this story...

There's a woman, she's in an isolated place, butting up against the woods, and she's suddenly being threatened by a man who's much physically larger than she is.

And by his own account, he says to her, 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. Yeah. And it's one of the things that's most surprised me about media coverage of these events. A lot of the media outlets who are involved in pushing narratives about Me Too in this particular context are either completely omitting this detail of the story or they are

framing it in a way that makes it seem completely innocuous. And it's worth taking a look at some of these examples. We can take a look at the New York Times treatment of all of this. There's one post that describes the encounter as follows. Just before 8 a.m., Mr. Cooper was startled from his quiet birding by Miss Cooper, who was loudly calling after her dog, he said.

He asked her to leash Henry as the park rules required. She refused. They exchanged words. And as he recorded on his phone, she threatened to report that, quote, an African-American man is threatening my life, unquote. The thing that really leaps out is the phrase, they exchanged words. Did the New York Times not know the words that had transpired between them? They certainly did.

They certainly did. And again, this is not Amy Cooper's account of what was said. This is Christian Cooper's account. His own account includes the declaration that he told her he was going to do something to her that she wouldn't like. And Amy says that's one of the things that she found so baffling about the public response to all of this.

That no one seemed to care or even remotely sympathize with why a woman in a circumstance like that might be afraid. At this point, he himself acknowledges that this is when he starts recording sometime after the treats come out.

What's happening at this moment? Could you describe what happens when you see the phone produced, when you know you're being recorded? You know, it was absolute confusion because at this point, you know, I'm clearly making... My dog's with me. I'm clearly making efforts to leash my dog. Why is he continuing? So according to Amy, when we first see her in the video, she is...

kind of hunched down over her dog and she has the leash in her hand and she's getting ready to comply with Christian's request. She's going to put the leash on her dog. And that's when she notices that he is now filming her. Would you please stop? Sorry, I'm asking you to stop.

Please don't come close to me. Sir, I'm asking you to stop recording. Please don't come close to me. Please take your phone off. Please don't come close to me. I move towards him and it's really weird because he's still standing there, you know, same very physical posture. And suddenly out of him comes this voice from a man who's been very dominant towards me. Suddenly, you know, almost this victimized voice saying, don't come near me. Don't come any closer. Like almost like he's terrified of me. And I'm like,

To me, that's even more terrifying now because it's, you know, you've gone from screaming at me. If you kept screaming at me, at least it was consistent. But now his whole verbal demeanor has changed. And she describes a circumstance where once the camera comes out, Christian's whole demeanor changes. He goes from angry to meek.

That made no sense to me whatsoever. And so wanting to bring an end to this entire thing, she says this is when she decided to call the police. You've asked him to stop recording you. He's still recording you. And you then essentially issue an ultimatum of sorts. I looked around. I'd explored all my options. I tried to leave. I tried to look for anyone who was around. There was no noise and no sound.

And it was, you know, it was my last attempt to sort of hope that he would, you know, step down and leave me alone, which he didn't. Please don't come close to me. Please take your phone off. Please don't come close to me. And I'm taking a picture and calling the cops. Please, please call the cops. And I remember him saying something like this.

Go ahead. Please call the cops. I'm going to tell them there's an African-American man threatening my life. Please tell them whatever you like. Now, Barry, I think we should dive into this phrase, I'm going to tell them an African-American man is threatening my life, more in a minute. But before we do that, there's been so much made about this 911 call and specifically about Amy repeating this description of who she's engaging with.

but also a general conversation around her demeanor and this kind of increasingly frantic tone. I'm sorry, I'm in a ramble, and there is a man, African-American, he has a bicycle helmet. He is recording me and threatening me and my dog. There is an African-American man. I am in second floor. He is recording me and threatening myself and my dog. And my dog.

I'm sorry, I can't hear you. I'm being threatened by a man in the ramble. Please send the cops immediately. This has been described by some journalists as a performance almost. And certainly for me, when I saw it, like she seemed to be getting increasingly hysterical. I agree. And it's hard not to view that without any context as her like really trying to pour it on and make this more urgent.

But we tracked down the actual 911 call audio, and that was kind of revelatory for me. I'm sorry, your phone is breaking up really bad. I can't hear anything you're saying.

It is abundantly clear that the 911 operator cannot hear what Amy is saying. Ma'am, I cannot hear anything. The phone is breaking up really bad. Immediately when the call goes through, I realize it's a bad connection and they can't hear me and I can't hear them. I'm sorry, I can't hear you either. I'm being threatened by a man in the Ramble. Please send the cops immediately.

When I watched this video for the first time, that possibility had not entered my mind. Yeah, it didn't occur to me either. I'm sort of shocked that I'm just learning about this now. Like, this is very important context that kind of helps explain her emotions or the fact that she was very, very frustrated and emotional when she was on the phone. What it doesn't address is the issue of her threat.

Right. Before calling 911, Amy utters the phrase that is probably foremost in many people's minds when they think about this. I'm going to tell them an African-American man is threatening my life. I'm going to tell them there's an African-American man threatening my life. That's, to me, one of the things that made this story fairly untouchable. You know, I'm someone that doesn't shy away from touching a lot of third rails. So I've heard. But to me, the fact...

First of all, of her, like, just general demeanor. Like, it just seemed so hyperbolic compared to what I was seeing in the video. Right. But it's one thing to, when you call the police, to give a description of the person you're calling about. Yeah.

That is one thing. But the fact that she says to him explicitly, I'm going to call the police and tell them there's an African-American man threatening my life. It's really hard to find like an explanation for that. Right. That looks good for her. Right. And in most people's minds, there's no justification for it. In fact, when I've talked to people about this initially, that's kind of the first thing they say. There's no excuse for her having done this. But let's look at the ground we've covered so far. Right. Right.

We've at least put into context the kind of tone of her voice in that phone call. We know now that they couldn't hear one another. And we at least know that there were other things about Christian's demeanor that day. And from his other encounters, we can infer that the possibility that he was actually yelling at her is not so far off. It's sensible to suspect that she might have been afraid.

We know that Christian has acknowledged that he threatened her then. Again, sensible to think she might have been afraid. What does an afraid person do at that moment in those very few seconds when she says, decides that she's going to call the police and she says to him, I'm going to call the police and I'm going to tell them that an African-American man is threatening my life. I mean, it's hard. It's like what's literally true here is that she is encountering a man and giving a physical description of him.

But why does she say it in exactly this way? Is she trying to evoke this specter of racist police who will hurt him? Or is she just trying to use this threat of law enforcement to scare him into backing off of his own threats? I can't know either way. I can't crawl into Amy's head and give you just what her intentions were in that moment.

But I did put the question to her. I feel like it's important to give you a chance to respond to what many people really see as the embodiment of your wrongdoing here. When you were having this encounter with Christian at some point, after asking him not to photograph you, not to videotape you or record you, you said to him, I'm going to tell them, referring to the police, that an African-American man is threatening me.

Why did you say African-American man in that context? Sure. And, you know, I think to understand that question is to really think about this in the broader context of what already transpired at this point. You know, I was I was in a situation. I was a woman. I was alone in a park.

I had been threatened multiple times at this point. My dog was trying to be lured away from me. And, you know, to the same extent, if it had been a white man, I would have said there's a white man threatening me. If it had been a white woman, I would have said a white woman is threatening me. It was just a descriptive term. And during the call, you similarly mentioned race a couple of times. Can you describe that?

What you were thinking in that context and why you might have done it then? So, you know, once again, it was that same descriptive phrase. I think, you know, the initial time I say it, it's something like a man who's African-American with a bike helmet. And then I think she's cutting me off saying, I can't hear you repeat yourself. And I'm just condensing, condensing it down. So it comes from a man who's African-American to an African-American man.

You're struggling to be heard here. You're not, you know, emphasizing race in this context. So, you know, people think I'm getting more and more hysterical, which I am, but not because of him, but because I'm on with this operator who is basically repeating over and over again, I can't hear you, which is, you know, an absolutely terrifying situation when you're calling for help and someone's saying they can't hear you. What do you make of her explanation?

I can't know. And it seems appropriate to me given the stakes here. I think I'm going to need a little bit more than speculation about whether or not she was being racist.

It's not impossible for me to believe. And it becomes at least a little more credible to me when I take into account the rest of the 911 call. She doesn't mention Christian Cooper's race every time she describes him to the 911 operator. I'm sorry, I'm in a ramble, and there is a man, African-American, he has a bicycle helmet. He is recording me and threatening me and my dog. There is an African-American man, I am in second luck, he is recording me and threatening myself and my dog.

Yeah. This is a woman who is, at minimum, like, legitimately has reason to be afraid. And Christian has, on the other hand, practiced fear.

This encounter many times before, as he describes it in his own transcript, left his home with dog treats because that's something that he regularly does to punish what he describes as intransigence. Which is completely bizarre. It's really strange. It is a very bizarre thing to own dog treats if you don't have a dog. It's very strange. It's very strange. But again, I don't want to cast him as a monster here. It's hard for me to put myself in Christian's shoes here.

because he's someone who, at minimum, has had, by his own admission, two encounters with dog owners who took this very badly and who tried to get into a physical altercation with him. And I can tell you that Jerome Lockett is quite a bit smaller than Christian Cooper. So the fact that he pushed over Christian Cooper, it's kind of a big deal. Even Christian admits to being a little bit surprised that it led to this.

But the reason why that surprise didn't lead him to stop doing this, to think for a moment that maybe approaching a single woman alone in the park while she's by herself, like, might actually frighten her. Like, that's a bit hard for me to wrap my head around. And I do think it complicates the story in a really important way that people ought to consider. So you're completing this call and you're at some point

On the video, there's a click, as in the leash is getting attached to Henry again. And there's a moment where we can hear Christian say, Thank you. Thank you. And then he kind of clicks off the video. And that's the end of this encounter for most people who know anything about your story. Do you happen to remember what happens after that?

I do. He was still there. He was still standing there. I was still on with 911, struggling to hear them, them struggling to hear me. And then I remember the sounds of someone coming along the path. And I remember screaming out to this person who didn't know man, woman, child, what was going to come out of that path.

And, you know, thankfully it was a man, you know, Christian. Christian, by the time I turned around, now left and disappeared. And this man, you know, came and stood by me. I don't remember how the call 911 ended or how, but they then, their dispatch people called me back and

while I was with this man. And this man, you know, was helping them understand where I was, how to get to us, et cetera, and then helped me walk with him back out to the main area where he left me, but by the road, as we saw, you know, the NYPD SUV vehicle pull up. About how long were you there talking to the officers? Maybe two minutes of that. It was pretty quick. Okay. Okay.

And she says that was the end of it. She left the park with Henry and headed home. When I think back now to this 40-second video and what I thought about it and what so many other people seem to think about it, and now that I'm taking into account this entire picture that I just couldn't see then, the intensity of COVID, the accounts of these other dog walkers, interactions with Christian Cooper, and

The conflict between the birders and dog people in Central Park and in other parks. Amy's history of sexual assault. Like, I don't know what I think about her intention that day, but I do know that the simple accepted narrative that we all seem to go along with, that was just far too clean and too simple. Right. I think that's clear.

And we should revisit the framing that we would encounter any time we would see this story in the media, that this was a white woman faking tears to try to get a black man hurt or potentially killed because he had the audacity to ask her to leash her dog according to the park rules.

Or that this white woman was so racist that she was terrified of a gentle, Harvard-educated birdwatcher because he happened to be a black man. And she, for that crime, tried to use the police to hurt him. Now, I'm sure there are plenty of people who will hear all of this, all of the additional details and the complicating facts that we've gone through. And they will continue to believe that Amy Cooper is a racist, privileged white woman.

But even if you believe that, I just want to point as hard as I can to the fact that this story was covered by everyone. It is among the most covered stories of the past year. And yet almost none of these outlets even mentioned any of the things that we've talked about here. They didn't go out and find that other side of that 911 call.

None of them, despite in many instances having talked to Jerome Lockett or received his written statement, bothered to include details about another encounter between Christian Cooper and other dog owners in the park. Like these things seem pretty relevant to this broader narrative. And again, I'm not trying to pick on the New York Times here or anything of that sort.

But they are a media outlet who is viewed as the paper of record. This is a local New York story. This is something that if anybody's going to get it right, they're going to get it right. They've got the resources. They've got the time to do it. And they're supposed to be serious, objective journalists. But it's worth looking at how they covered this story. So I just want to look at this description from a different story of theirs.

Mr. Cooper, who is Black, asked a white woman to put her dog on a leash. When she did not, he began filming. In response, the woman said she would tell the police that an African-American man is threatening my life.

And that's it. So this is implying, or no, it's not just implying, it's saying that Amy Cooper called 911 just because he was filming her, not because he threatened her or was threatening to lure her dog away from her. Right. And then two weeks later, in the same story that I'd mentioned earlier, where they did in fact at least mention that they had, quote, exchanged words, in that article, the

The Times does eventually get around to quoting Christian Cooper, saying, if you're going to do what you want to do, I'm going to do what I want to do, but you're not going to like it. But not until 2,300 words into a 2,500-word story. You don't get the actual threat that he issued to her until you've already read about Amy Cooper's years-old affair with a married man that ended in a lawsuit, and Mr. Cooper's childhood history of birdwatching, his love of comic books, his graduation from Harvard,

They made an editorial decision to bury the complicating details of this account in a way that would not create question marks around the bit of moral clarity that they seem to be going for with this story.

This needed to be a pristine account of the peril that black men face in America, of the peril that black people face just going about their daily business. And the fact that this story maybe doesn't fit that narrative never seems to enter into anyone's imagination.

The thing that is driving moral clarity in this case, it's obviously, is the idea of race. And not just race, but like Karen-ness, which in a way is like saying uber whiteness. Like,

If whiteness is privileged, then the most privileged white people are Karens, middle-aged white women who don't think anything about calling the police. And I've thought a bunch and have talked with you a ton about what exactly it means to be a Karen and using this scenario. If the situation was reversed, let's say the dog walker in this scenario is Christian Cooper. He's a black man walking his dog. And the birder is...

in the ramble in this case is Amy Cooper. And the exact same scenario plays out, but she's the one taking the video. Right.

Wouldn't it play out potentially exactly the same way simply because of her Karen-ness? And when you say play out exactly the same way, you mean she would be cast as the villain? Yeah, that it's kind of that trope, that identity slot. There's no way out of it. Absolutely. That convenient narrative about race in this context is...

completely alters our perception of the story and makes it impossible to read it in any way except for many people anyways impossible for them to read it in any ways except a black person is being disadvantaged here

But I mean, I really like your analogy reversing the races, especially if you take into account the other things that Christian had done, that he was attending community board meetings and insisting that there should be more enforcement in the parks. He wanted more police in the parks to enforce the rules and to go after people who had their dogs off leash.

Which, if you can imagine, in your hypothetical circumstance, if a white woman had been advocating for more police in the parks and then sees a Black man walking a dog off the leash and then starts recording him and is harassing him and is trying to give his dog treats against his will, this is an act of privilege. It's her harassing a Black person. There are so many ways in which she becomes the villain of that story. Yeah.

And I think that that is actually another element of what really attracted me to the story. It was very obvious that this was convenient for folks in that you had a demon and you had a deity. You had this angel in Christian Cooper and you had this horrible person in Amy Cooper. And in most of life, it is never that simple. And in this particular case, it seems very obvious to me now that this is not nearly that simple. Camille, I think one of the reasons that

there were dozens of stories in the New York Times about a 42nd kerfuffle in Central Park between a dog walker and a birder is because of what Shelby Steele calls poetic truth, right? And the distinction between the poetry of a truth of a particular situation, in this case, our understanding maybe about racial injustice and power disparities between white and Black Americans, and actual truth, which

which is what exactly happened in those 40 seconds and in the minutes that came before and came after. And I think maybe the most famous or infamous example of what Shelby calls poetic truth is the idea of hands up, don't shoot, right? Like, I think if you ask most people in the country, or let's just say, I'll say in my own life, lots of people that live in blue places, they would probably tell you that Michael Brown had his hands up. But...

Even the Obama administration's Justice Department came to the conclusion that he did not. Right. But the poetic truth of that and the reason that people are still marching, were marching throughout this summer in cities across the country screaming and chanting, hands up, don't shoot, was because of the poetic truth of that slogan. And if I want to try and give the most generous read to understand why the media so cottoned on to this slogan,

tiny incident that especially in the context of this horrible past year should not even rate as

It's because of that. I think you're right, Barry. I think you're capturing a lot of what's going on here. And, you know, there are so many examples of this that actually come to mind, places where there's one story that's very simple and elegant and fits a particular expected narrative. And then there's the reality, which is much more complicated and nuanced and includes details that make this a far less convenient story to latch on to, to understand.

be an example of what folks already believe to be true about the prevalence of racially motivated violence in America or the prevalence of systemic racism. I'm reminded of one story in particular, the story about Jasmine Barnes, a young girl who I believe was seven years old at the time, who was riding along in this car with her mother when someone fires into the car killing Jasmine.

And Jasmine's mother immediately describes the killer as a white man who was wearing a red hat. And at the time, January of 2019, there was a lot of talk of racially motivated political violence. And there were even calls at this early date from people insisting that this needs to be called a hate crime before they know much of anything else. And to go further, at some point,

a particular man is identified who is said to look something like the sketch image that was produced. And it was a white gentleman by the name of Robert Cantrell. And as it turns out, someone else had committed the murder. Police would eventually arrest two young Black men for this killing. And the initial furor around this case that was all concerned with whether or not this was racially motivated and barely even asking questions about it, they were confident of it,

It kind of dies down in this rather odd way. But Robert Cantrell's name never left certain people's imaginations. He continued to receive death threats and harassment online via social media to the point where his family came out and tried to speak out on his behalf. I've seen accounts suggesting that he might have been suffering from depression. But what we do know is that he would eventually take his own life maybe a year later.

And it's impossible to say whether or not one thing caused the other, but it is certainly the case that this is another example of a narrative that turns out to be not true, to be provably false, but continues to be sustained in many respects because it really conveniently satisfies a particular narrative that is of deep importance to a lot of people.

Socially, politically, morally, for whatever reason. Like to me, the reason the story of Amy Cooper matters, it's not important primarily because it destroyed the life of this one woman with her dog. Although I believe that it's important to recognize tragedy, like the tragedy of Robert Cantrell, who you just mentioned. The reason that I think is super important is because of what it shows us about the

and our own inclinations toward joining mobs, but more importantly about the state of our institutions, especially our journalistic institutions that are supposed to be above us

The mob that are supposed to put truth and facts above ideology and narrative. Like their job is supposed to be complicating the story. And it seems to me more often than not, they're throwing gas on the fire because the fire is engagement and engagement is the business plan. And I don't want to live in a world where that is the reality. I don't want to live in that world either.

And that becomes all the more clear when you hear just how severe the consequences were for this very real person, Amy Cooper, who got turned into this scapegoat, this symbol for some fundamental evil in the world.

So, you know, I got home. I was still, you know, very worked up, very upset. I actually remember curling up on my sofa, just passing out. Amy says when she got home, she took a nap, woke up a few hours later and took her dog on a walk. I was out walking Henry. We were just walking along in Riverside Park, which runs up the Upper West Side.

And then she gets a text from a friend. He said, there's a video of you circulating on Twitter. And I was like, what do you mean? How long had it been? Just a couple of hours. I don't even have Twitter. So I was like, what are you talking about? And he immediately sort of sends this link to me. And my gut reaction is, oh, my gosh, this is a crazy out of context video.

And, you know, I'm trying to figure out what to do. And almost immediately, you know, he sends me a second message saying, you know, we've got a problem. Soledad O'Brien has just tweeted it to her million plus fans. This is not going to be good for you. She saw that the original video was posted by someone named Melody Cooper, who she would eventually learn was Christian Cooper's sister, but she didn't know at the time.

And, you know, at this point, I'm trying to figure out, you know, can I log into Twitter? Can I find this person named Melody Cooper and ask her to remove this video? Because I'm assuming Twitter's like Instagram, which is the only social media I've ever had. But that is around the same time that she started receiving phone calls and text messages and emails from strangers. Probably within like 10 to 15 minutes, my phone just starts blowing up with these angry threats, hateful,

death threats, graphic images. My phone is ringing off the hook out of control. It just went insane, like almost immediately. Amy had been doxxed. Her phone number, her home address, her employment details, all of this information was being plastered all over the internet. It was on Instagram and Twitter.

They even changed the Wikipedia page of Franklin Templeton, her then employer, to include her, quote, performance, unquote, in this video. Camille, did she give you a sense of what these threats were like? She did. In fact, she gave us an archive of a number of these messages that she had received via email. And there was a point in our conversation where she actually read one of these messages to me. Amy Cooper from New York said,

If that is indeed you in the video, slit your wrists. You're a piece of shit. Both the way you treated that man as well as the dog are clear the world would be a better place if you were no longer in it. You are pathetic and vile. Someone should put that leash around your neck and drop you from one of those trees. I hope to God that they prosecute you for animal cruelty as well as lying to law enforcement.

Maybe in jail, you'll get treated as you deserve. If anyone deserves prison rape, it's you. Every breath you take is a breath better suited for someone else. You bring dishonor on you and the whole humanity. The noble thing to do is remove yourself from society as a whole. So please kill yourself. How many of these do you remember receiving that day? Probably 100.

Plus another hundred phone calls where people verbally said those sorts of things. Do you remember who you spoke to that day in terms of your friends, family? So it wasn't until my family that I spoke to later that night, I actually gave my family the message of to deny they knew me or deny they ever had a child named me. Sorry. And that, you know, if anyone called them just to say I didn't exist. Over the course of that first day,

A crowd had gathered in front of Amy's apartment. By that night, she was packing a bag and fleeing for a safe house. And over the next 24 hours, Amy would be fired from her job. She would lose her dog, Henry. And she would have to watch as this video of her would play over and over and over again online and on television where commentators would, in some instances, compare her actions to that of a lynch mob.

And over the next few weeks, as public pressure mounted and protests took place in front of the DA's office, all of this would eventually culminate in Amy Cooper being formally charged with a misdemeanor, filing a false police report. If she was convicted of this charge, she would face potentially up to a year in prison.

And it's a circumstance that struck me as a bit odd. And when I talked to legal experts about this, they seemed a bit mystified by it as well, especially considering not just the scant evidence to support the charge that she had made a false police report, but also the fact that Mr. Cooper, the alleged victim in this case, didn't want to press charges and formally refused to participate in the case. But despite that fact, the case was pursued for months.

But remember, all this is happening against the backdrop of America's racial reckoning, which is just in its earliest weeks. George Floyd! I can't breathe, George! And during that period, you had nightly protests all over the country, and New York City was certainly no exception. What is that?

More tense clashes around the country, including this standoff at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, where a police car burned as officers pepper sprayed... There were demonstrations in front of the mayor's house, in front of City Hall, in the streets of Soho. And from what I've learned about the case, it's hard for me to ignore the likelihood that the decision to proceed with this prosecution against the odds was largely a public relations stunt.

And eventually, after months, predictably, the charges had to be dropped. And Amy was formally cleared in the legal sense. But to the world, Amy is still thought of as guilty. So Amy Cooper was put on trial. She just wasn't put on trial in a court of law. And I think as, Camille, as we've seen so many times before, the court of public opinion or, you know, the court of mob justice is

There's no due process there. There's no sense of proportion. And if you just think through all of the elements of her story, what they all come down to is the demands of the mob or the demands of public pressure. So like her dog wasn't taken away from her because the shelter she worked with thought the dog was in danger. He was taken from her because of public pressure.

And so once public pressure died down, they gave her dog back. Right. You think about Franklin Templeton, her former employer. They didn't fire her because she was bad at her job. They fired her because of public pressure. So in the end, it all just came down to that. It came down, I think, to a mob making demands and a mob getting what it wanted. Absolutely.

With respect to the articles, both on social media, the posts that were being made there, the articles that were being written about you, not only that you were racist, not only that what you did was just wrong or dishonest, but that you were specifically attempting to hurt Christian Cooper, that you were trying to use law enforcement as a weapon against him. You were, in some instances...

Said to be effectively the woman who had suggested that Emmett Till had done something to her. I mean, I can remember the very first media segment that I saw about this. And I remember it was Gayle King. And she was describing...

the circumstance that involved you as well as the death of George Floyd. And I remember her describing this as a circumstance where it was, you know, open season on black men, that it felt to her like it was open season on black men. At the time, do you, did you...

Did you hear things like that? Were you aware of this coalescing narrative about you sort of playing this profound role in terms of this kind of story about race and disadvantage and oppression in America?

At the time, I didn't. I've heard it now. I remember the first time I looked at it, first I had to Google, of course, who Emmett Till was, not being a U.S. citizen and that not being a current story, and Googling it. And I think I almost threw up in my mouth just thinking that I could be equated to someone that led to an innocent man being killed and that I would ever even remotely have that thought that went through my mind. It made me sick. I understand your perspective on this.

And what happened and why you said what you said. But I wonder if you understand why someone else might have a different conclusion about this. Yeah. So it's sort of like that Gayle King statement. You know, if you hear that and believe, you know.

And it may be correct, it may not. I'm not an expert in the stats or the data that black men are more aggressively policed, more aggressively attacked, harmed, hurt by police. Yes, because that's going to play into, much like a man threatening me in the park plays into my back history and trauma with being sexually assaulted, someone who

has that trauma or has had that narrative given to them, it plays into their trauma and their back history. And it's exactly the same thing. So yes, but beyond a shadow of a doubt, completely. You left New York. You are now effectively in hiding. Yes. What is life like for you now? Are you able to move around sort of freely, so to speak? Do you still have concerns about being spotted out? No.

I go out, but it's very rare I leave my home without someone. You know, I'm terrified to take my dog for a walk, because what if someone sees me go into a home and realizes it's where I live? So sometimes I'll drive him over to a remote field or something just to play with him, but...

So it's still hard, you know. There's a beautiful hiking trail that I'd love to take him on. I can't take him there because I'm terrified to go into the woods with him anymore. Every time, like, you know, nowadays, even if I go to the grocery store, there's always this moment of fear. You know, somebody...

Even if you go for a walk and someone turns twice, you're like, is it because they know who I am? Should I run? Should I hide? Should I go home? Is there going to be a confrontation? I remember last fall being in a very, very remote place, no place that anyone would ever think I would be in, and being brave enough to take Henry to the dog park. And this woman, she comes up to me and she says, is this a Cocker Spaniel?

And I'm immediately almost having a panic attack that she's identified the breed of my dog. And then she proceeds to say, oh, I saw a video on the internet of a Cocker Spaniel. And I just grabbed Henry and said, oh, I'm sorry, we have to leave. Because I was just so terrified she was about to say something. You know, as it just dragged on, I just realized, you know, this is my life. I felt like there was no ability to recover.

I would, you know, just constantly go through things like maybe I'd be driving along and I'd just think, you know, if I just put my foot down to the accelerator, could I just, you know, slam through a tree or slam over a bridge and, you know, it could just be over. You know, there's days I just wake up in the morning and I just think, why did I have to wake up again? Like, why did I just die to my sleep last night? And that, you know, that was a very reoccurring thought. And, you know, it's weird, um,

Even after the criminal is dismissed, you know, for a lot of people, you'd think that's, and it's a good feeling, but it's a very short lived feeling because, and especially in my case, everyone still thought I was guilty. Everyone thought I'd, you know, committed this crime. So it almost didn't matter that it was over. And it was sort of, you're sort of left with this emptiness of where do I go and what do I do next? Like that's over and I have nothing. Yeah.

Do you think there's any world where you'll be able to put this behind you at this point? I have friends that live overseas in foreign countries, and there are certain countries and cultures where it really didn't run there. And those aren't necessarily places that speak English, but those are places that I'm possibly contemplating moving or relocating to. Mm-hmm.

Forgiveness is a word that comes to mind. And I know that with Christian, a number of people have applauded him for saying publicly that he thinks that what's happened to you has perhaps gone too far, that there's a sense in which you shouldn't lose your job, you shouldn't have certain sorts of punishment happen to you. In fact, he

pretty famously declined to participate in the prosecution of you. He said that they could, you know, if they were going to prosecute you, if the DA felt that this was something they needed to do, that they could do it without him. Have you given much thought to that?

You know, I've given huge amounts of thought to it. And, you know, I think the place I start with is, you know, Christian and I have never actually spoken to each other. And, you know, I've been misportrayed in media. I don't believe he's been portrayed as a full and complete human being. So to me, you know...

I don't want to comment on what media has said or what media has shared about him. I'd rather speak to him one-on-one myself as two mature adult human beings. So that is something that you would want to do. You would want to talk to him. Now, I know previous legal teams of mine have reached out to him and he's not responded. Do you have a sense of what you'd say to him? You know, I've thought about it a lot. I've gone over different views, different renditions of

And, you know, I have a zillion questions, of course, in my head or things I'd like to say. But, you know, the one that really I really would just like to start and open the conversation with is you scared me and really just leave it there and leave it to him to respond back to me as to what he wants to say back to that, because I think that opens the door to conversation. And that's that's interesting because you scared me is not I'm sorry.

That's not the place where you're starting, which I suspect there are many people who feel like you are primarily culpable for this, that you are the one who kind of owes an apology in this circumstance. Where are your feelings about what transpired that day and culpability? Having at this point, there was a statement early on that was released in which you said,

at least it was attributed to you. And I know you had a PR firm at that point and you weren't quite yourself. Where are your feelings about that in terms of kind of responsibility and forgiveness of Christian or imploring him to sort of request forgiveness? You know, I think disputes happen. And when disputes happen, they are between two people. You can't have a dispute by yourself. And, you know, both people...

are, you know, responsible for that. But I also have a belief that when there's conflict between two people, it should be addressed between the two of them. And, you know, that I believe and that I believe should be a conversation that should have been held between myself and Christian and not, you know, myself, Christian and the world. There's a real sense in which, I mean, at some point the police got involved as well. And at this point, is that a call that you...

having made in the moment? Do you feel like you needed to make that call in the moment? I think, you know, at that point, if I think back to it, you know, he had made, you know, two different threats at different points in time. He had, you know, at some level acted on that threat by calling my dog over. His, you know, the way he was gripping his bike helmet was terrifying to me. My feelings of being trapped, you know,

I don't know that as a woman alone in a park, I had another option. So you play the scene back in your head now and think that that was still the appropriate move to call the police to say that you felt your life and your dog's life were being threatened. Yes.

Christian Cooper did not respond to our request for comment on this story, but the invitation is open. We'd be more than happy to have him at any time. Camille Foster is one of the hosts of the Fifth Column podcast. Please go find him there. And if the story today interests you, they'll have a lot more details coming up on a special episode. Camille, thank you so much for doing this. Thank you, Barry. Thank you.

And thank you for listening. As always, please subscribe and tell your friends about the podcast. If you feel like it, give us a good rating. If you're a new listener, welcome. Please go back and listen to our older episodes. I think you'll find that we are trying our damnedest to have the kind of conversations in public that are often only happening in signal groups and behind closed doors. And if you've got a story tip or a guest suggestion, please come see us at honestlypod.com. We'll be back soon.