A white woman who has faced backlash for calling the cops on an eight-year-old black girl selling water outside of her San Francisco apartment building broke down in tears on Monday as she described all of the death threats she as received.
Alison Ettel, 44, was caught on camera calling 911 to report eight-year-old Jordan Rodgers for selling bottled water without a permit on Friday, to fans headed to the nearby San Francisco Giants stadium.
Jordan’s mother, Erin Austin, took video of Ettel calling the police, posting the clip to Instagram and Twitter and giving Ettel the nickname #PermitPatty.
The video quickly went viral and Ettel, speaking out to the Today show on Monday, said she has received thousands of hateful emails.
Alison Ettel, 44 (pictured), broke down in tears as she described the thousands of threats she’s received since she called the cops on an eight-year-old girl on Friday
In the interview, Ettel breaks down in tears as she says she’s received ‘all kinds of threats’ – including ‘death threats’ – many of the the messages containing ‘horrible, horrible images’.
While Ettel says she’s not proud of herself for calling the police on a little girl, she explained her reasoning, saying she was trying to get work done upstairs and couldn’t concentrate with the girl and her mother’s yelling.
She also said she only confronted the girl’s mother.
‘I was trying to be polite but I was stern and I said “Please, I’m trying to work and you’re yelling, you’re screaming, and people have open windows, it’s a hot day, can you keep it down?”‘ Ettel recalled.
Ettel, left, was recorded calling the cops on eight-year-old Jordan Rodgers, right, for selling water without a permit outside her San Francisco apartment building on Friday
The little girl was selling water to try and raise money for a trip to Disneyland
But Austin said Ettel never asked them to be quiet, instead coming downstairs and immediately demanding ‘to see a permit to sell water from an eight-year-old’.
‘That woman thought that she could use her white priviledge and it didn’t work,’ Austin said.
Jordan herself spoke out to Good Morning America, saying the incident left her frightened.
‘I did not want to see the police because I was scared,’ she said.
Ettel also said that she never called to report Jordan, but rather to inquire about whether what the mother and daughter were doing was legal.
‘I did not want to see the police because I was scared,’ Jordan Rodgers told Good Morning America on Monday
The girl’s mother, Erin Austin (pictured), said she would not accept an apology from Ettel
Ettel said she would like to apologize to Jordan and her mother, but the two have said they would not accept her apology.
The online firestorm has also come down upon the company Ettel runs, TreatWell, which makes cannabis tinctures for cats and dogs.
Magnolia Oakland, a dispensary that carries TreatWell’s products, said in a statement that it had immediately dropped the company’s products upon learning of the video.
‘After seeing this video of their CEO, calling the police on an 8 year old entrepreneur selling water on a hot day, we decided without hesitation that we could no longer patronize her company,’ the dispensary said.
The online firestorm has also impacted the company Ettel (above) runs, TreatWell, which makes cannabis tinctures for cats and dogs
Ettel says she is not proud of calling the police
‘Treatwell was one of our best selling products but to us, Integrity is always above profits.’
Jordan was selling the water to raise money to go to Disneyland, since her mom recently lost her job. She was back on Sunday selling water again.
Since the story went viral, musician Jonathon Brannon stepped up and offered to buy the family four tickets to the theme park.
Critics who spread the video far and wide said the threat of calling 911 on the black woman and child was racist and ‘evil’.
‘They want police to kill us. The girl was causing no harm. They know what happens when they call the police,’ wrote columnist Shaun King. ‘This is evil.’
CNN commentator Marc Lamont Hill chimed in: ‘If you call the police on an 8 year old Black child selling water, you’re saying that you don’t care if that child lives or dies. It’s that simple.’
Actress Gabrielle Union commented: ‘This woman asks to speak to somebody’s manager on the daily. She permanently wears folks OUT’.
The person who posted the video also posted a split image of the woman who called cops on the people having a barbecue (left) in April, and the woman allegedly calling cops today (right)
Several people on Twitter compared Ettel to the woman who called 911 in April over a group of black people illegally barbecuing in a park in Oakland, California.
The unidentified woman in the viral video said they were using a charcoal grill instead of a non-charcoal grill in one of Lake Merritt’s designated grilling zones.
A bystander named Michelle Snider, noticed the commotion and confronted the woman for ‘harassing’ the family, camera in hand, to record the 25-minute verbal altercation.
The woman who called 911 in that case was dubbed ‘bbqbecky’ online, in reference to the derisive term ‘Beckys’ for white women.