‘Permit Patty’ only ‘pretended’ to call cops on 8-year-old girl selling water

Alison Ettel, the white woman who went viral for apparently calling police on an 8-year-old African American girl selling water in front of her flat, claimed that she was just pretending to call the police. She insisted there was “no racial component” to her behaviour.

On Saturday, the mother of the girl posted a video of Ettel apparently reporting the girl’s supposed crime of selling water “illegally.” In the video posted on Instagram, Ettel is seen ducking down out of sight when the mother keeps on recording her.

“Yeah, and um, illegally selling water without a permit,” she is heard saying into the phone. When the mother says it’s “on her property,” Ettel insists that it wasn’t on her property.

The video has quickly gone viral since it was uploaded. Internet sleuths found out the woman’s name and her profession. They also found out that Ettel is the founder of the company TreatWell, which creates cannabis products for humans and animals. Ettel has since been dubbed as “Permit Patty.”

The backlash has been swift to come as well. An online commenter has uncovered a brief interview Ettel had with SFGate in 2015. And by that time, it appeared even her company didn’t have permit.

“It’s kind of like ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’” she told the publication when asked about TreatWell’s legality. “We haven’t gotten any pushback yet.”

Another commenter reached out to local dispensaries in San Francisco, California, where the incident took place and where Ettel and the girl live. The commenter posted screenshots of the answers she received from the establishments, and it appears that they have either dropped TreatWell products or their stores or are considering it.

Leafy also reports that at least three retailers have dropped the products because of the incident. Magnolia Oakland said it would sell the remaining TreatWell products but would donate all proceeds to a local non-profit.

Internet users have also likened her to another white woman who called the cops on a group of African Americans for having a barbecue cookout at a park. In April, Jennifer Schulte became viral when a video of her reporting black men to police for cooking barbecue in an Oakland, California, park. She was dubbed as BBQ Becky.

For Ettel, although she admitted that she handled the situation “poorly,” she didn’t think she deserved all the hate coming toward her. She said she felt being “discriminated against” since the incident went viral.

She explained to the Huffington Post that she didn’t really call the police on the little girl but just pretended to do so. She apparently just “snapped” because the girl’s mother was “screaming” about what they were selling. She asked the build’s security to intervene, but they said they couldn’t do anything.

“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 just didn’t close the windows of her office so that she wouldn’t hear them screaming, she said it was too hot and closing the windows wouldn’t have stopped the noise anyway.

She confronted the girl and her mother, but she claimed she was only bluffing when she said she was going to call the cops. Ettel has also denied that it was a racial issue.

“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.” She said she has been getting online threats.

“It was stupid,” she told the paper. “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. Please don’t make me sound horrible.”