Django Unchained actress Daniele Watts said Monday morning that she made a stand for her “constitutional rights” in resisting the LAPD late last week.
“It’s because I believe in America and what it stands for, and I believe in freedom, and I think that a country that calls itself the land of the free and the home of the brave — if I’m in within my amendment rights, my constitutional rights, to say, ‘No, unless you charge me with a crime I will not be giving you my ID,’ that is a right that I stand up for because of the shoulders that I stand on,” Watts told CNN’s “New Day.”
The LAPD said it received a call from a citizen last Thursday indicating that “a male white and female black were involved in a sexual act inside a Mercedes with the vehicle door opened,” which Watts said was nothing more than “fully clothed” PDA with her boyfriend, Brian James Lucas. Police later arrived on the scene when Watts was outside on the phone with her father, she said, and was asked for her ID through Lucas. Watts interrupted and said she wouldn’t provide it — a Facebook video and audio released by TMZ revealed the resulting argument she had with the attending officer.
The episode wound up with Watts and her boyfriend briefly detained and released without any criminal charges being filed. As Mediaite noted, per California law, law enforcement is permitted to detain an individual “for a reasonable amount of time” to ascertain his or her identity if there is suspicion of a crime.
“For me, standing up for that constitutional right was a gift and a blessing, that I had the opportunity to do that,” Watts said.
