A supporting actress from Django Unchained is at the centre of a storm after being detained by Los Angeles police on suspicion of prostitution.
Black actress Danièle Watts, who played Coco in the Oscar-winning 2012 movie, was kissing her white partner in the street when two officers approached them and asked for their ID.
When Watts refused, she was roughly handcuffed and bundled into a police car.
There is no requirement in the US to carry any form of ID unless in charge of a motor vehicle, in which case it is mandatory to be in possession of a driving licence. Neither is it legal for a law officer to demand that any person formally identify him or herself unless there is a reasonable suspicion a crime is being committed.
The police officers’ ‘reasonable suspicion’ appears to revolve around their assumption, or the assumption of the citizen who had called them out, that a black woman kissing a white man probably betrays a prostitute/client relationship.
Watts, who was released shortly afterwards, posted pictures on Facebook showing herself handcuffed and crying, accompanied by the message: “As I was sitting in the back of the police car, I remembered the countless times my father came home frustrated or humiliated by the cops when he had done nothing wrong. I felt his shame, his anger, and my own feelings of frustration for existing in a world where I have allowed myself to believe that “authority figures” could control my BEING… my ability to BE!!!!!!!
She continued: “Those cops could not stop me from expressing myself. They could not stop the cathartic tears and rage from flowing out of me. They could not force me to feel bad about myself. Yes, they had control over my physical body, but not my emotions.”
In a posting of his own, Watts’ partner, chef Brian James Lucas, wrote: “From the questions that he asked me as D was already on her phone with her dad, I could tell that whoever called on us (including the officers), saw a tatted RAWKer white boy and a hot bootie shorted black girl and thought we were a HO (prostitute) & a TRICK (client).
“They handcuffed her and threw her roughly into the back of the cop car until they could figure out who she was. In the process of handcuffing her, they cut her wrist, which was truly NOT COOL!!!
“This is something that happened to her and her father when she was 16. What an assumption to make!!!”
An LAPD public information officer would only say there was no record of the incident, which comes three weeks after black TV producer Charles Belk was wrongly arrested and held in custody for “armed bank robbery and accessory to robbery of a Citibank”. Beverly Hills police later issued an apology.
