Thread re Amy Cooper & white women falsely accusing black men. She said, "I am going to tell [the police] that there is an African American man threatening my life." A lie. Amy herself was breaking the rules by having her dog off leash.
The man's crime? Asking Amy to follow the rules by leashing her dog. Amy did call the cops and make the false accusations, her tone increasingly hysterical, while she nearly strangled her dog.
The man recorded her, so her lie is plain. But what if he hadn't? What if he had stayed when the police arrived and tried to explain? Who would the police have likely believed?
Herein lies a fundamental problem with #BelieveWomen. As a criminal defense attorney who believes in due process and who has represented a number of falsely accused black men, this hashtag and the premise behind it has always made me deeply uncomfortable.
Understand this: Amy Cooper is not an outlier. White women leveling dubious accusations of black men of assaulting them, often sexually, dates back to the 1600s. There are famous cases and books: The Scottsboro Boys, To Kill a Mockingbird.
But there are the unknown regular occurrences of it. I know because it is, sadly, part of my legal practice. Today. In 2020.
