Entertainment

New Details Revealed About Her Arrest

by Kadeen Griffiths

Well, this is awkward. New details are coming to light in the Daniele Watts arrest that, if true, make it less of a clear-cut case of alleged racism than we thought. Watts, who starred in Django Unchained as Coco, and her boyfriend Brian James Lucas had a brutal encounter with the Los Angeles Police Department. According to Lucas and Watts, the police arrested Watts after mistaking her for a prostitute when the neighbors called the police on them for making out in a car. She then went on to claim that the police put the handcuffs on her so tightly that it caused her wrists to bleed. However, US Weekly reveals that Los Angeles Police Department released a report of the incident with Watts and Lucas on Sunday stating:

On Thursday September 11, 2014, around 3:01 p.m., patrol officers from North Hollywood Division along with a patrol sergeant responded to a radio call of indecent exposure in the 11900 block of Ventura Boulevard. The citizen who called the police to complain told the 9-1-1 operator that a male and a female were involved in indecent exposure inside a Silver Mercedes with the vehicle door open.

The responding sergeant and police officers located two individuals that matched the description of the suspects, and they were briefly detained. Upon further investigation it was determined that no crime had been committed. Ms. Watts and her companion were subsequently released.

An internal complaint investigation has been initiated regarding this matter.

TMZ released audio recordings of the incident with Watts, taking things a step further. According to TMZ, eyewitnesses were reporting that Watts and Lucas were "[having] full-on sex in the passenger seat with the door open" and that's why the police were called. In the audio recording, the officer asks for Watts' identification as part of his natural line of questioning to investigate the incident and Watts refuses, citing the number of times the police have been called on her just for being black. After Watts walks away to continue her conversation with her father, the officer is heard having a cordial conversation with Lucas, even stating that if not for Watts' behavior he'd "already be gone. Just so you know, I would already be gone."

Ultimately, we have no way of knowing if the eyewitnesses TMZ spoke to were correct in stating that Watts and Lucas were having sex in the car before they called the police or if Watts and Lucas were correct in stating that they had been doing nothing more intimate than making out. However, the only thing that the TMZ recordings reveal is that there doesn't seem to be much truth to their claim that the police were treating them like "a tatted rocker white boy and a hot bootie–shorted black girl" or "HO & a trick," let alone that the police were the ones being racist toward them.

Ultimately, neither Watts nor the police officer detaining her come across as looking very sympathetic in the audio recording, between Watts' immediate screaming and the police officer's sarcasm and condescension. However, the circumstances of the detainment don't change the fact that Watts was still handcuffed so tightly that she had an open wound on her wrist. Regardless of how she was acting, there is no justification for why she needed to be handcuffed at all let alone why she needed to be injured while doing so.

Watts plans to file a complaint against the LAPD and has hired a lawyer, according to TMZ, and regardless of who was in the wrong in the verbal disagreement her physical injuries definitely give her a fair case.

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