Daniele Watts in tears while being detained by LA police (Picture: Brian Lucas/Facebook)

African-American actress Daniele Watts has spoken about being handcuffed and held in the back of a police car after officers thought she was a prostitute.

Her crime? Seen kissing her husband, Brian James Lucas… in PUBLIC!

According to accounts on Facebook by Watts and Lucas, two police officers from Studio City Police Department in Los Angeles approached them and asked Watts for ID.

When she refused, Watts was cuffed and put in the back of their police car while they checked her ID. Watts was released shortly afterwards.


Watts is best known for her role as CoCo in Quentin Tarantino’s slavery film Django Unchained.



Accompanied on her Facebook page by a photo of her crying next to a police officer, Watts wrote: ‘Today I was handcuffed… after refusing to agree that I had done something wrong by showing affection, fully clothed, in a public place.

‘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. I felt his shame, his anger.

‘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.’

A Los Angeles Police Department public information officer would not comment on Watts’s treatment, telling Variety that there was no record of the incident as Watts was not brought into the station for questioning.