We promise that we are not trying to beat this Britt McHenry story to death, but we can’t let this one last detail fly under the radar. The company in question, Advanced Towing, has released a statement about the incident, and would like us to know that they do not want McHenry fired, nor do they hold a grudge against her.
Via the Washington Post:
To Whom It May Concern:
Parking enforcement is contentious by nature. At the same time, neither Gina, our lot clerk, nor our company, have any interest in seeing Britt McHenry suspended or terminated as a result of her comments.
Ms. McHenry is our neighbor, and, as she said, to paraphrase, made remarks that were out of line. She is human and errors in judgement can be made in the heat of the moment.
Gina is a single mother of 3 children who works a difficult job to provide her family. Gina holds no ill will toward Ms. McHenry.
As a small regulated business, we saw no benefit to releasing the video, except to highlight personal attacks employees in jobs like towing, public parking enforcement and others sometimes encounter. The video was not licensed or sold to anyone.
Advanced Towing Co.
Ummm, okay, I call shenanigans on this for the following reasons:
1) If they didn’t want McHenry to face discipline over the video, then why release the video in the first place? How often do videos of this nature get released? Exactly.
2) The editing of the video (with only McHenry’s responses captured) was sketchy and deliberately made McHenry look as bad as possible. We still don’t know if she was provoked in any way or how confrontational the towing employee was. That doesn’t excuse McHenry, but it’s a big missing piece to this story that Advanced Towing purposely left out.
3) They knew what they were doing. Once McHenry claimed she was on the news, they probably Googled her and realized how much publicity the story would get if they released the video.
4) Once the video went viral, they could attempt to take the high road in order to improve their horrible reputation and try to be the official towing partner of the D.C. Ramada or something.
In all seriousness – you cannot deliberately release a video that has the risk of taking down a sports journalist and then say you don’t want her fired and were just trying to raise awareness about personal attacks against employees. There’s plenty of other ways to do that than taking advantage of the most famous person’s eruption in your office.
In 2015 it is pretty easy for one stupid thing you say or do to go viral. I can honestly say I have not seen a video of someone mouthing off to a tow truck clerk before. If it happens a lot and Advanced Towing released these videos on a regular basis, fine. But the fact that the video they released involves someone who works for ESPN seems awfully coincidental.
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