Cops Handcuff "Django Unchained" Actress Because They Assumed She Was A Hooker

Danièle Watts arrest Facebook

An African-American actress and her white boyfriend have accused two Studio City policemen of detaining her after watching her make out with him, believing she was a prostitute with a client.

Danièle Watts, star of Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained, wrote on her Facebook page that she was handcuffed and thrown into the back of a police cruiser after failing to provide the officers with ID, according to The YBF.

In her posting, Watts wrote, “Today I was handcuffed and detained by 2 police officers from the Studio City Police Department after refusing to agree that I had done something wrong by showing affection, fully clothed, in a public place. When the officer arrived, I was standing on the sidewalk by a tree. I was talking to my father on my cell phone. I knew that I had done nothing wrong, that I wasn’t harming anyone, so I walked away. A few minutes later, I was still talking to my dad when 2 different police officers accosted me and forced me into handcuffs.”

According to Watts, she refused to show officers ID  — saying she had done nothing wrong — before being placed, crying, in the back of a police cruiser only to  eventually be released.

Writing on his own Facebook page, her boyfriend, Chef Brian James Lucas elaborated,  “Today, Daniele Watts & I were accosted by police officers after showing our affection publicly. 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).”

Lucas also included a photo  of an injury to Watts’ arm the result of being roughly cuffed by the officer.

Watts, who also appeared on Showtime’s Weeds and will be seen in Partners with Martin Lawrence and Kelsey Grammer on FX, said she sat in the back of the cruiser remembering when her father had been harassed due to his skin color.

“I remembered the countless times my father came home frustrated or humiliated by the cops when he had done nothing wrong, ” she wrote. ” 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!!!!!!!”

According to Lucas, who believes that they were singled out because they are a mixed-race couple,  they have been in contact with 3 lawyers, the ACLU, and the NAACP.

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To be honest, at first glance I thought (and hoped) that this was an article from The Onion. Unfortunately, it seems like the police have transcended even the bounds of parody. I'll keep the commentary on the downlow: the story is self-explanatory. An informative article from The Mic gives us the details.

African-American actress Danièle Watts claims she was "handcuffed and detained" by police officers from the Studio City Police Department in Los Angeles on Thursday after allegedly being mistaken for a prostitute. According to accounts by Watts and her husband Brian James Lucas, two police officers mistook the couple for a prostitute and client when they were seen showing affection in public. When the officers asked Watts to produce a photo ID when questioned, she refused. Watts was subsequently handcuffed and placed in the back of a police cruiser while the officers attempted to figure out who she was. The two officers released Watts shortly afterwards.

Even more disturbingly (a phrase that it seems I always find use for when discussing the police nowadays), this is not an isolated trend:

In 2008, a Galveston, Texas couple sued three police officers who arrested and beat their 12-year-old daughter after mistaking her for a prostitute. And at the 2011 Netroots Nation convention in Minneapolis, Minn., Cheryl Contee of Jack and Jill Politics asked a panel of African-American women to raise their hands if they had ever been mistaken for a prostitute. Everyone’s hands went up.