The Correct Response: Charged With Filing False Police Report
New York Times
By Jan Ransom
July 6, 2020
“When Amy Cooper, a white woman, called 911 from an isolated patch in Central Park where she was standing with her unleashed dog on Memorial Day, she said an “African-American man” was threatening her life, emphasizing his race to the operator.
Moments before Ms. Cooper made the call, the man, Christian Cooper, an avid bird-watcher, had asked her to leash her dog, and she had refused.
On Monday, Ms. Cooper was charged with filing a false report, a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail, the latest fallout from an encounter that resonated across the country and provoked intense discussions about how Black people are harmed when sham reports to the police are made about them by white people.”
To the extent that this woman was arguably deploying racial stereotypes and weaponizing them, it will make people think twice,” said Nancy Gertner, a Harvard Law School professor and a retired federal judge. “It is a big deal.”
Lucy Lang, a former Manhattan prosecutor and the director of the Institute for Innovation in Prosecution at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said that filing a false report was “a very troubling crime.”
Adding race to the equation, she added, created “just an absolute recipe for a tragic disaster.
In a separate move meant to address the problem of Black people being falsely reported to the police, New York state lawmakers approved legislation last month that allows people “a private right of action” if they believe someone called a police officer on them because of their race, gender, nationality or other protected class.”
IT’S ABOUT TIME!
So, here’s the question:
Would strict imposition of criminal penalties and civil liability provide adequate and effective deterrence to filing racially motivated false reports and making racist 911 police calls?
07/07/2020 @ 6:32 am
“The pending criminal charge against Ms. Cooper appears to be among the first that a white person in the United States has faced for wrongfully calling the police to make a complaint about a Black person.”
Read the full NYT article at:
07/07/2020 @ 8:36 am
Lately there have been a few reasons I’m glad to live in New York State. Before this I lived in North Carolina and before that in Indiana. From a state government standpoint, you can see the appeal.
The link above to “private right of action” leads to the NYTimes and I”m not a subscriber. I had no idea what that meant. It turns out it means the victim has a right to sue the perpetrator. I had written a different answer before it occurred to me that I didn’t understand the question.
Adequate and effective deterrence? It probably won’t mean the phenomenon will be entirely eliminated. Laws rarely do. Murder is illegal and yet it happens frequently. However, the advantage of a civil avenue is that the penalty is unknown and could be quite large. A sympathetic jury could make life extremely difficult for a defendant.
In the current climate, particularly in blue states, I think this deterrent will work as the police bend over backward to prove they’re not racist, and this is a really painless way to do that. For one thing, the guilty party inconveniences police officers. For another, the wrong police move in a case like this would currently bring protests. I realize the deterrent in question is civil but really civil and criminal are a package here.
07/07/2020 @ 10:17 am
@Koshersalaami;
With the abundant availability of video evidence that can go viral in the blink of an eye, certain individuals and businesses wouldn’t be so quick to call for the police at the sight of a black or brown person engaged in an altogether legitimate and benign activity like jogging in a park or waiting for friends to arrive…
Police Department liability could also mean that police dispatchers might not be so quick to send the police to respond to such a ‘complaint’ if there is a possible alternative to an armed police presence.
When a caller/complainant insists on adding race to the equation, and creating an absolute recipe for a tragic disaster, red flags should go up all around the matter in question…