White homeowner calls police on black woman taking shelter from the rain
A white woman was captured in a video footage calling police officials in Brooklyn on a black woman who was taking shelter in her doorway from the rain, according to reports. The incident occurred in the Park Slope neighborhood, in Brooklyn and was captured by Darsell Obregon on her cellphone camera as she was heading to a subway station.
Obregon said that on her way to the subway station when it started pouring and the nearest possible place she found to stay dry was the doorway of an apartment, which unfortunately for Obregon belonged to the white woman in the video. The woman was identified as Arabella Juniper Torres, according to the Independent. Obregon shared her experience on Facebook and posted the video she captured. Her post on the social media platform went viral and was shared nearly 10,000 times. The black woman said that she was only waiting in the location until an Uber arrived. However, while she was waiting in front of the doorway, Torres confronted her and asked her to leave while it was still pouring.
She added that when she told Torres that she had no plans of leaving, the white woman, in response to her statement decided to report her to the police. Reports state that Obregon had not told Torres that she was waiting for an Uber. Torres, in the video, can be seen trying to prevent Obregon from leaving when her ride arrives. She even gave the license plate number to the 911 dispatcher at the end of the phone, the video shows.
"So you’re sending an officer because now she’s recording me… I asked her to leave and now she’s refusing," Torres can be heard saying in the video. She then tells the Uber driver: "If you go anywhere, you’ll be committing a crime as well; you know that, right?" Obregon, in her post, also included the hashtags #bbqbecky and #pettypatty, which were references to similar previous instances where white people had called the police on black people for doing everyday things, like enjoying a barbeque.
The United States is increasingly witnessing cases of racial profiling of black and other minority people in the country by its white citizens. Previously, a white woman in San Francisco was dubbed “Permit Patty” and inspired a flurry of memes after she called the police over an 8-year-old girl selling bottled water outside her apartment building to raise money for a trip to Disneyland after her mom lost her job.
Over the last few months, idents of racial profiling incidents involve white people calling the police on black people and other people of color for activities like napping, sitting at a Starbucks, staying at an Airbnb and even for participating in a college campus tour. And almost every other week, a video footage or pictures emerge of white people shaming black people. This has also given rise to a new form of social media shaming along with highlighting the everyday racism black people face in America. This incident in Brooklyn is the latest example for the same.