This woman felt brave and bold enough to call the cops ON AN EIGHT YEAR OLD CHILD SELLING BOTTLED WATER IN FRONT OF HER HOME, but oh look how #PermitPatty runs and hides as soon as the camera comes out.
Racists like #PermitPatty love calling the cops on minorities because it offers a layer of insulation between themselves and having to take personal responsibility for the cops’ actions against said minorities.
These always white, almost always women know exactly what can and probably will happen when the cops show up in scenarios like this. They aren’t any more stupid or oblivious than white people who threaten to call ICE on anyone they hear speaking Spanish in public.
Had this (or countless other similar situations) gone south for this little girl and/or her cousin who took the video, #PermitPatty and her ilk would’ve instantly absolved themselves with a “Well they shouldn’t have broken the law.”
If the victim wasn’t breaking the law, they’d just say “They shouldn’t have resisted” or “It’s their own fault for looking like thugs” or “They bought a dime of weed in junior high” or any of the tired old chestnuts people incapable of empathy like to trot out.
The #BBQBecky’s and #PermitPatty’s know exactly what they’re doing when they call the cops on black folks for simply existing and living their lives. They’re knowingly using a system already stacked against minorities as both a sword and shield.
Do these arseholes actually care about permits or loitering or public park cookout etiquite? Nope! Otherwise they’d be calling the cops on their white neighbors for doing the exact same shit. They only care about getting the respect they believe their whiteness entitles them to.
Wow, go figure. Allison “#PermitPatty” Ettel is a former “equities trader and Brookings Institution (neolib centrist “think tank”) researcher” turned founder & CEO of Treatwell, a Bay Area-based medical cannabis provider.
Ettel calls the cops on an 8yo black girl selling bottled water on a hot day, meanwhile she’s exploiting the legal weed boom to make money. I’ll bet she’s never given a thought to all the (mostly black and Latinx) people rotting in jail for doing the same pre-legalization.
*Correction: The girl’s mother took the video, her cousin posted it online.
Here’s what absolutely kills me about #PermitPatty: She straight-up told HuffPo she didn’t care about a permit and just “snapped” after “hours” of “screaming” that was “not in a soft voice.” 
Even if she was just “pretending” to call the cops, that’s still like pointing an unloaded gun at a stranger’s face. It’s not a “mistake” as Ettel claims, it’s an intentional and deliberately threatening act, even if the act itself is empty.
Full disclosure: My last job entailed being the doorman at a bar/venue, and I’ve totally pretended to call the cops when dealing with an obstinate drunk who won’t leave after they’re booted. HOWEVER, without fail they’ve been entitled white people like #PermitPatty.
Also, I’m lucky enough to live in an area where the cops may be a bunch of jerks, but at least they don’t have a habit of assaulting or murdering innocent people. Or even guilty people for that matter, they’re surprisingly professional for a bunch of fascist bully-boys.
Professional to a fault, really. I recently had to deal with a dude known throughout town as a violently disturbed individual and even though like six cops showed up, they didn’t do jack shit until he tried going in the restaurant next door.
They wouldn’t even get him away from my front door, I had 100+ people in there and I couldn’t let them outside for ALMOST TWO FUCKING HOURS because they let him stand in front of my bar screaming insane threats and ranting about pedophiles.
Even after I signed the trespassing order I was told by the officers on scene they couldn’t actually take him in unless he came back. They also told me we were the sixth local business to call 911 on him IN TWO DAYS.
Fortunately the restaurant next door had signed a trespassing order on him the previous day, so when he tried going in after walking away from me the cops scooped him up.
The whole time I was telling them “If you let him go now and he comes back, it won’t be screaming and yelling. He’s gonna attack someone. Or else he’ll attack someone in the Old Port or West End or Parkside or some other neighborhood.”
Meanwhile, I’ve been dragged out of my house in handcuffs in the middle of the night and involuntarily committed to a mental hospital just for hanging up on a useless crisis line operator. But they were gonna let a legitimately dangerous psychopath just keep on keepin’ on.
Kinda went off on a tangent there, but my point is this: Cops only have two settings on their badges, labeled “useless” and “dangerous.”
