Police in Los Angeles, California accosted and detained actress Danielle Watts, the star of Quentin Tarentino’s “Django: Unchained” as well as the TV shows “Partners” and “Weeds”, slightly injuring her arm with the handcuffs in the process.  She was not arrested.  It’s yet another account of American police treating a black person like a criminal for absolutely no reason.

The LAPD initially claimed ignorance of the situation, but Danielle Watts had uploaded photos and a stinging account of the torment at the hands of egregiously out of control officers on a street outside of a television studio to her Facebook page.  She had been sitting in a Mercedes kissing her white boyfriend, which she believes is the root of the incident.  Both were fully clothed.

Police later released a statement claiming that they were called because of “indecent exposure inside a silver Mercedes with the vehicle door open,” and that a sergeant and police officers had “located two individuals that matched the description of the suspects, and they were briefly detained.”

When the cops arrived, Danielle Watts writes that she was standing outside, talking to her father on her cellular phone.  They reportedly accused her of being a prostitute because she was a black woman kissing a white guy.  Since no crime was committed, Watts didn’t immediately hand them her ID, out came the handcuffs.  Watts said they “threw her roughly” in the police car.

The officers repeatedly implied that her partner – Brian James Lucas, a local chef known as a pioneer of the raw food scene – didn’t really know the woman he had just kissed.  Typically, the cops didn’t handcuff the white guy, just the black woman.  They threatened to sedate Watts.

Eventually, the cops determined no crime was committed – by Watts and Lucas, that is.  Without probable cause nor evidence of a crime, the cops had no business doing any of that to Watts and Lucas.  Since the only reason they stopped her was that she was a black woman with a white man, there is likely a civil rights lawsuit coming the LAPD’s way.

In recent weeks, African-Americans have been killed by American cops for: selling individual cigarettes without a license; jaywalking; shopping.  It seems that despite the horrible publicity, the cops are intent on doubling down on harassment of African Americans.