Django Unchained Actress Detained By Police After Kissing Her White Husband In Public

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Danièle Watts, an African-American actress who played Coco in Django Unchained and appears as Martin Lawrence's daughter on FX's Partners, says she was handcuffed and detained on Thursday by police in Los Angeles who suspected she was a prostitute. According to Watts, she was approached by two police officers after kissing her husband Brian James Lucas, who is white, in public. Watts was reportedly asked to show ID and, when she refused, she was handcuffed and placed in the back of a police car. They let her go after finding out who she was. Watts wrote about the incident in a Facebook post: 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.

Apparently, they thought she was a prostitute.



The first problem, of course, is that police are concerning themselves with prostitution in the first place, since as far as I'm concerned, people should be free to participate in acts that don't harm anyone. But it's yet another example of people looking at African-Americans -- no matter how successful they are -- as criminals, just based on their looks.



Last month, this guy was arrested for fitting the description of a bank robber.



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“Within minutes of the robbery call being broadcast, police detained a subject less than a block away from the robbery who closely matched the clothing and physical characteristics of the male suspect," the Beverly Hills Police Department said in a statement. "After an eyewitness positively identified the subject in a field show-up, police arrested Charles Belk for suspicion of robbery,” the statement said. Belk is a tall, bald African-American man. The department also issued an apology to Charles Belk, who said that he was detained for hours before being released. “The Beverly Hills Police Department deeply regrets the inconvenience to Mr. Belk and has reached out to him to express those regrets and further explain the circumstances,” the police statement said. A spokesman said the incident will be recorded as a detention, not an arrest.

And of course we have a couple other threads about people seeing black folks in the act of living their lives being pegged as "up to something". At least these two people weren't shot.



What is it about people with extra melanin that makes people assume they are committing a crime?

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