A Twitter video of a woman on her cell phone has gone viral because she seems to be calling the cops on a black girl selling water on the sidewalk.
The video appears to be shot near San Francisco’s AT&T Park before the Giants Saturday afternoon game against the San Diego Padres, where a young girl was announcing ‘Cold water for $2’.
‘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,’ a Twitter user called Raj (@_ethipiangold) wrote alongside a video of the confrontation.
Raj refers to the woman as #PermitPatty.
The original tweet, as the camera rolls, the woman ducks down behind a wall but continues to call cops
When the camera approaches, she unapologetically points out that the 8-year-old did not have a permit to sell water
The woman in the video is seen pacing on the phone, and then when she realizes there is a camera on her she ducks behind a wall. Although Raj asserts the woman is speaking with police, it isn’t clear from the video whom the woman is talking to.
When the camera catches up with her she says to the person shooting the video, ‘yeah, illegally selling water without a permit.’
When the person shooting the video says that the girl is selling water on her own property, the woman says ‘its not your property’ as she walks away.
The video has made the rounds, raising noisy indignation and supportive comments for the girl.
Several people on twitter compared this woman to the woman who back in April called 911 because a black family was barbecuing in a park in Oakland, California.
A new meme making the Twitter rounds, a split of the woman who called cops on the people having a barbecue, and the woman calling cops today– they call it Barbeque Becky and Permit Patty
Another Twitter user posted this idea, a water bottle with ‘Permit Patty’s’ face on it
Actress Gabrielle Union tweeted her opinion, that the woman on the video ‘wears folks OUT’
Even actress Gabrielle Union got in on it, tweeting: ‘This woman asks to speak to somebody’s manager on the daily. She permanently wears folks OUT’.
Raj has been posting updates, sharing that the little girl is doing just fine, even sharing a picture of her with her cooler of water. She said that while the woman called the police, no officers showed up, ‘bc [sic] clearly it wasn’t that serious.’
But this is just the latest in a series of videos surfacing of white people calling the cops on black people doing everyday things– those include the infamous barbecue, as well as sitting in Starbucks, participating in a college tour, and taking a nap in a campus lounge.