It is important that America’s dirty BIG secret is continuously told. Biased treatment, mistreatment, and profiling against Black and Brown people by both police and a section of the population that simply cannot accept America’s path to equality and real homogeneity, must be exposed for the evil that they are and the pain that they bring.
“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,” wrote Daniele Watts on her Facebook post. Daniele Watts is an actress who appeared in the movie “Django Unchained.”
Daniele Watts wrote that she was standing at a tree speaking to her dad on a cell phone when police arrived. She refused to give police here ID and walked away as she knew she did nothing wrong. Subsequently Daniele Watts was accosted and handcuffed by two different police officers.
CBS2/KCAL9’s Art Barron interviews Daniele Watts & Brian Lucas
Daniel told CBS2/KCAL9’s Art Barron that she and her boyfriend of a year and half were being affectionate in their car. She demonstrated with her boyfriend Brian Lucas a typical embrace any loving couple are free to engage in anywhere. She believes the cops assumed she was a prostitute and her boyfriend, her client.
The LAPD said in a statement Sunday that officers responded to the location around 3:01 p.m. following a radio call of “indecent exposure.”
The couple learned from officers that someone at a nearby office building had called in the report. Watts had just gotten out of an interview at CBS Studios’ Radford lot and was sitting in the Mercedes-Benz on her boyfriend’s lap.
“The citizen who called the police to complain told the 911 operator that a male and a female were involved in indecent exposure inside a Silver Mercedes with the vehicle door open,” the statement alleged.
When officers arrived, police said they located two people who matched the description of the subjects.
“I will continue to look any “authority figure” in the eye without fear,” said Daniele Watts. “NO POLICE OFFICER OR GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL IS MORE POWERFUL THAN ME. WE ARE EQUALS. I KNOW THAT I WILL ALWAYS BE FREE BECAUSE THAT IS THE NATURE OF MY SPIRIT.
And moreover, I deeply enjoyed connecting with the cops who detained me. I allowed myself to be honest about my anger, frustration, and rage as tears flowed from my eyes. The tears I cry for a country that calls itself “the land of the free and the home of the brave” and yet detains people for claiming that very right.”
Jon Stewart said it best in a piece he titled ‘Race/Off’. “Race is there and it is a constant. You are tired of hearing about it? Imagine how fucking exhausting it is living it.”
What Daniele Watts experienced is not an exception. A few weeks ago a more grotesque police encounter occurred in which Black Hollywood producer Charles Belk was placed in handcuffs, humiliated, and arrested for 6 hours because he ‘fit the description’. To many people of color, the police and many in our own communities are a clear and present danger to our freedom, well-being, and citizenship.