Django Unchained actress arrested after 'police mistook her for a prostitute'

Daniele Watts claimed she was ‘handcuffed and detained’ by Los Angeles officers after being mistaken for a prostitute.

13:06 15 September 2014

Django Unchained actress arrested after 'police mistook her for a prostitute'

 

Daniele Watts, an African-American actress claimed she was ‘handcuffed and detained’ by ‘racist’ Los Angeles officers after being mistaken for a prostitute. 

 

Daniele Watts, an African-American actress claimed that she was detained by Los Angeles officers after police mistook her for a prostitute. 

 

Writing on Facebook, the actress who appeared alongside Leonardo DiCaprio and Christoph Waltz in Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained, said that two police officers approached her and her white husband Brian James Lucas when they were seen ‘showing affection’ in public. 

 

She continued that after she refused to produce her photo ID, the police handcuffed her and held in a police car as the officers tried to figure out who she was. She was released shortly afterwards. 

 

The actress also posted pictures on Facebook where she was in handcuffed and crying. 

 

"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, " she wrote in the post.

 

"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!!!!!!!

 

Her husband, Brian James Lucas, a chef, supported her account of the events in a social media posting of his own. He 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).”