Django Unchained actor asked to apologise over LAPD racism claims
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Version 0 of 1. Civil rights advocates have called on Django Unchained actor Danièle Watts to apologise for accusing an LAPD sergeant of racial bias, after she was arrested for a public display of affection with her white boyfriend. The activists, who initially supported Watts, told reporters they were now uncertain whether she had been telling the full truth about the highly publicised incident in the Studio City neighbourhood on 11 September, according to NBC News. Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable president Earl Ofari Hutchinson said new photos which showed Watts straddling her celebrity chef boyfriend Brian James Lucas suggested there was “provable cause for the detention”. Hutchinson said Watts’ Facebook post on the matter, in which she wrote passionately of crying tears “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” was “like crying wolf”. LAPD sergeant Jim Parker has also denied suggestions by Lucas that he thought the pair were “trick” and “ho”, calling the claims “malicious and false statements”. He told the Hollywood Reporter he was called to the scene because a caller complained the couple were having sex in public. In a leaked audio recording of the incident, he can be heard defending his right to ask the actor for her identification, while she refuses to submit. Watts, who played the slave Coco in Quentin Tarantino’s acclaimed 2012 film, issued a statement in response to the civil rights activists’ press conference. She made no mention of race, but said: “It is a constitutional right that we do not have to present ID to any member of law enforcement unless we are being charged with a crime.” |