Alison Ettel, a white woman in San Francisco, has received the wrath of the internet after pretending to call the police on 8-year-old Jordan Rodgers. A video of the incident was recorded by Jordan's mother Erin Austin. In the short clip, Ettel is seen with her back to the camera on the phone. "This woman don't want a little girl to sell some water. She's calling police on an 8-year-old little girl," says Austin in the video. At that point, Ettel ducks down to hide but Austin follows her and continues to record. "You can hide all you want, the whole world is going to see you boo," exclaims Austin as Ettel stands up. “Yeah, and um, illegally selling water without a permit," Ettel responds. Since the video was posted on Saturday it has gained over a million views on Instagram.
Since the video went viral, the internet came to Jordan's defense. With the hashtag #PermitPatty, Twitter users began to tear into Ettel. The situation continued to escalate, and Ettel told Today in an exclusive interview that she has gotten, "all kinds of threats. Horrible, horrible images and death threats. All for something that was an escalated miscommunication between two neighbors." She continued on to claim that she asked them to quiet down while she was working. "I said, 'Please, I'm trying to work. You're screaming. You're yelling, and people have open windows. It's a hot day. Can you please keep it down?'" Austin says that Ettel never approached the situation peacefully, and threatened to call police from the beginning. "She never asked us to be quiet. She came out and directly demanded to see a permit to sell water from an 8-year-old," Austin said.
Ettel told the HuffPost that she only pretended to call the cops, which is just as bad, if not worse. It appears as if Ettel felt like the thought of the police would have a strong enough impact on a person of color that they would fearfully obey her wishes.