últimas notícias

“She lost her job, her home, and her public life,” Mr. Barnes said. “Now some demand her freedom? How many lives are we going to destroy over misunderstood 60-second videos on social media?”

Mr. Cooper, who has expressed deep ambivalence about the severity of the public response to Ms. Cooper’s actions, said on Monday that he “had zero involvement” in the district attorney’s case against her.

Asked to comment on the pending charge, he said, “I have no reaction.”

People are rarely charged with filing a false police report, legal experts said, because the authorities do not want to discourage the reporting of crimes and because it can be difficult to prove that a person made a false report knowingly.

But experts said that the evidence in the case against Ms. Cooper was strong and that it could have broader implications in other instances of white people making false police reports against Black 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.