Updated: Sunday, May 27, 2018, 8 a.m. EDT: The official Oakland, Calif., police log from the Lake Merritt incident has been released, and it has identified Jennifer Schulte as the woman who called to complain about the people barbecuing. The log shows that Schulte also lied about being pushed by the woman filming the incident, Michelle Dionne Snider. The police had Schulte evaluated for a 5150 hold but concluded that “she didn’t fit the criteria.”
Earlier:
When it comes to internet sleuths and social media, they’re bound to uncover your identity, especially if you’re involved in some bullshit. And it seems as though the Oakland, Calif., cookout hater has been identified.
Last week, a then-unidentified white woman went viral after she attempted to put a stop to a group of black people cooking out at Oakland’s Lake Merritt park by calling the police. She was so serious about getting the family to obey the “no charcoal” sign, she stood around for two hours waiting for the cops to show up, giving another white woman, the wife of one of the black men at the cookout, the chance to put her on blast, and the video went viral.
And now the woman has been meme-morialized. Forever.
Although it’s quite funny now, I’m sure the incident was anything but funny for the people involved. Thankfully, the police officer who showed up didn’t escalate the situation, no matter how many white tears the woman attempted to shed. But, as I wrote earlier, no one is safe from internet sleuths.
On Monday afternoon, The Root received an anonymous tip that included a photo of a woman and her name and stated that she was allegedly the woman involved in the park incident. So, of course, we did our investigating. The photos, minus a few inches of hair, some extra pounds and gray hair, look exactly alike.
Although a Google search brought up a LinkedIn profile that had already been deleted, it still showed her employer’s name in the results. As with most corporate emails, it was easy to find out the company’s email format, so we emailed the woman allegedly identified as Jennifer Schulte, who is, ironically, an environmental expert and advocate. A response to our first email received an out-of-office reply until the 15th. But by Tuesday evening, social media (particularly Twitter) was already tweeting to Stanford, her former alma mater.
Since today is the 15th, we figured we’d email again, just to see if she was back and wanted to give a statement or her side of the story, but this is what we received back:
553 Sorry, your email address has been blacklisted. Please contact Environmental Resources Management Limited to have yourself removed.
Since the original email was now blocked, we tried a second email address and received the same out-of-office reply.
Realistically speaking, we really didn’t expect a response, because people are cowards, but one would have been nice, just to put into perspective why someone felt the need to call the police on the family. But now this woman is all over the internet and will forever be known as the black-people-cookout hater.