#PermitPatty claims she has received threats after ‘pretending’ to call cops on 8-year-old
It must be something in the water in the Bay Area. First it was #BBQBecky, and now it’s #PermitPatty.
In yet another instance of a white woman—this time in San Francisco—feeling the need to call the police on black people, children in this case, minding their own business an Instagram video posted on Saturday shows a woman apparently calling the police on an 8-year-old for the crime of selling water.
“This woman don’t want a little girl to sell some water, she’s calling the police on an 8-year-old girl,” the child’s mother, who took the video, is heard saying.
But the woman, whose real name is Alison Ettel, claims, naturally, that “this has no racial component to it” and claimed she was only pretending to call the police.
READ MORE: Issa Rae: positive images of Black in media overcompensate past negativity
READ MORE: Sarah Huckabee Sanders booted from restaurant on moral grounds
Ettel is seen on the phone walking away with the phone up to her ear, then ducks down out of sight in attempt to hide after seeing she is being recorded.
#PermitPatty says she had ‘reasons’
Ettel later told the Huffington Post, that she ducked to simply “find a quiet place where I could hear” the building security guard she said she was speaking to. Ettel claims that she was calling security—not police—because the child’s mother began “screaming” and she could hear the woman in her office.
“They were screaming about what they were selling,” she said. “It was literally nonstop. It was every two seconds, ‘Come and buy my water.’ It was continuous, and it wasn’t a soft voice, it was screaming.”
When asked why she didn’t just close the windows, she said because it was too hot and closing them would not have stopped the noise. She asked the building’s security to intervene but said they could do nothing.
After confronting the girl and her mother, Ettel claims she was only bluffing when she said she was going to call the cops. The unnamed woman who shot the video, whose Instagram handle is ladyesowavy, did not respond to a message seeking comment,
“I had been putting up with this for hours, and I just snapped,” Ettel said. “I have no problem with enterprising young women. I want to support that little girl. It was all the mother and just about being quiet.”
Unfortunately, none of this mattered to Twitter, which quickly dubbed Ettel #PermitPatty.
So my little cousin was selling water and didn’t have a permit so this lady decided to call the cops on an 8 year old. #PermitPatty pic.twitter.com/SiL61pnAgl
— Raj ? (@_ethiopiangold) June 23, 2018
A late apology
Ettel, who apparently runs a company that sells cannabis products for pets, said she is now getting threats online and feels “discriminated against” but acknowledged how bad this looks.
“It was stupid,” she said. “I completely regret that I handled that so poorly. It was completely stress-related, and I should have never confronted her.
“That was a mistake, a complete mistake,” she added. “Please don’t make me sound horrible.”
