Amy Cooper, the New Yorker branded ‘Central Park Karen’ by the media following a dispute with a black birdwatcher, has had misdemeanor charges against her dropped after being made to attend “psychoeducation” for “racial equality.”
Cooper had been charged with making a false police report after she dramatically called 911 on birdwatcher Christian Cooper and claimed he was “threatening” her “life” during a heated dispute, after he had told her to leash her dog in Central Park’s Ramble area – where dogs are required to be leashed – on May 25 last year.
A judge on Tuesday “granted Manhattan prosecutors’ request to toss Cooper’s case after she completed five therapy sessions” that focused on racial equality, the New York Post reported.
Cooper was sent to a “Critical Therapy Center,” where she received “psychoeducation and therapy services” focusing on how she “could appreciate that racial identities shape our lives but [that] we cannot use them to harm ourselves or others,” Assistant District Attorney Joan Illuzzi-Orbon said during the hearing.
The sessions, “designed for introspection and progress,” were a “moving” experience for Cooper, prosecutors said.
Some social media users likened the “psychoeducation” that Cooper was made to attend to a “reeducation camp,” and referenced the dystopian books ‘1984’ and ‘A Clockwork Orange’.
“Just an American being sentenced to a re-education camp. No biggie,” one person commented, while another tweeted, “Sounds an awful lot like reeducation dressed up as psychoeducation and therapy to me. This is evil.”
Nothing, just an American being sentenced to a re-education camp. No biggie. https://t.co/oMaHDfjuK0
Not sure that having completed ‘five “psychoeducation and therapy” sessions’ is substantive enough as a restorative justice alternative, but it’s better than the case just being hard dropped I guess. https://t.co/ZqT5kRkqiK
On top of the charges, the Central Park controversy led to Cooper losing her job at the Franklin Templeton holding company last year, and her dog was temporarily returned to a shelter after some critics accused her of animal abuse, though it was later returned.
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