However, within minutes, a tenant from the apartment building, identified as Arabella Juniper Torres by netizens, took it upon herself to call the cops and report Obregon for trespassing on private property. Obregon had only been standing under the covering for a few minutes.
Shocked, Obregon pulled out her phone to record the incident, which took place on July 25. She later uploaded the content on her social media pages, including on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
"On Sunday afternoon, I was in #Brooklyn walking to the train when a sudden rain storm began and I hid in the doorway OUTSIDE of a random apartment in #ParkSlope to shield myself from the rain and call an uber," Obregon wrote on her Facebook post. "No more than 3 minutes later a young woman who lives in the building opened the front door and told me that I can not stand there and had to leave."
"I told her I was not going to move (unbeknownst to her I was just waiting for my ride and would be leaving in a couple of minutes) so then she proceeded to call the police," she added, before including several hashtags such as #thisisamerica and #whiteprivilege.
"This is not public property," Torres tells Obregon as she speaks to the dispatcher for the local NYPD station. "So you're sending an officer, because now she's recording me… She's recording me and I've asked her to leave and she's refusing."
Adding insult to injury, Torres then offers a questionable description of Obregon to the dispatcher.
"I'm not sure, she's pretty old to be doing this… like 50… heavyset, I would say and [she's wearing] jeans and a shirt… blue jeans with some rips in it like she's 20," she continued. Torres claimed to be the owner of the building, although it's unclear if that's true.
And then, once Obregon's Uber driver finally arrives, Torres intervenes and tries to prevent her from leaving. A separate video shows Obregon sitting inside the vehicle as Torres stands nearby. "The uber car door is open because [Torres] opened it in hopes that I wouldn't leave and ‘threatened' to get in the uber with me if I did," Obregon captioned the recording.
"If you go anywhere you'll be committing a crime as well; you know that, right?" Torres yells at the driver as she dials 911 for a second time. "You're leaving, it's against the law."
It's unclear if police ever arrived on the scene and if any charges were filed.
Obregon's incident falls in line with similar experiences in which people of color have found themselves being reported to the local law enforcement for not actually committing a crime. Torres, dubbed Doorway Debbie by the internet, seems likely to ultimately join the likes of Permit Patty, BBQ Becky and ID Adam.
