Daniele Watts, a black U.S. actress who appeared in the hit movie Django Unchained, has accused Los Angeles police of handcuffing and briefly detaining her for "showing affection" in public.
The city's police force said on Sunday it was investigating a complaint from Watts, who posted a picture on Facebook, showing her crying next to an officer with her hands behind her back.
Los Angeles police said in a statement its officers had responded to reports from a passerby that a couple were indecently exposed inside a silver Mercedes on Thursday afternoon.
The officers detained Watts and her boyfriend but soon determined the two had not broken any laws and released them, police said.
"I don't understand how we live in a free country where cops can just put you in handcuffs for nothing," Watts says during an audio recording of the incident posted on TMZ.com.
Audio recording
"I'm going to get all of your names. What is a problem for me is that you think you're better than me and you think you have more power than me."
Police respond to Watts in the recording saying she put herself in handcuffs by leaving the scene.
"I do have more power than you," says Sgt. Jim Parker. "When I tell you to do something you have to do it, ma'am, that's the law. You took something that would take five minutes and made it 30."
Watts told KCBS-TV in a joint interview with her boyfriend Brian Lucas that she and Lucas were embracing in the car Thursday when police showed up. The station said the two have been dating for the past year.
"I knew that the clearest thing for me to do was to own my right as a free person and say, 'I haven't done anything wrong and I know I'm not required to give you my ID,'" she said.
Watts said she walked away and another officer put her in handcuffs and into the back of a patrol car. She was let go after police identified her.
"I don't have to feel ashamed for being who I am, and that's really where the tears were coming from," Watts said, referring to a cellphone video of her in the incident.
"I was handcuffed and detained by two 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," Watts wrote on her Facebook page.
"I remembered the countless times my father came home frustrated or humiliated by the cops when he had done nothing wrong," she added.
Lucas, a Los Angeles chef, wrote on his Facebook page that the police had thought she was a prostitute because of the couple's attire and their differing skin colour, the New York Times reported. Lucas is white.
Studio City is about 10 kilometres northwest of Hollywood.
Original Article
Source: CBC
Author: Thomson Reuters
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