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Remember Danielle Watts from last September? She’s the Django Unchained actress who claimed she was racially profiled by a Los Angeles police officer, but she was really having sex with her boyfriend. Watts has pleaded no contest to those disturbing the peace charges.

She and her boyfriend, Brian James Lucas, must perform 40 hours of community service and write an apology letter to the sergeant, according to the Los Angeles Times. Watts originally maintained that she was only stopped because she is black and her boyfriend is white, but that all changed once pictures of her straddling him in the car surfaced on TMZ.

Watts, who was also seen on Weeds, wrote in an op-ed to the Los Angeles Times that she could have remained calm in the situation, but thinks the sergeant might have been trying to “teach me a lesson.” (Hence the apology letter.)

Could I have been calmer, or more patient? Certainly. Still, the sergeant seemed to be trying to teach me a lesson. “She needs to know that she doesn’t dictate what happens,” he says on the recorded police audio.

Do I think the officer was “racially profiling” me by answering a call? I know police have to answer calls for service. But does that render invalid my initial question to the sergeant — “Do you know how many times the cops have been called … because I’m black and he’s white?”

Would someone have called the police if it had been a white couple? Would the sergeant have been so zealous in “investigating” what was clearly not a crime? Does bias have something to do with how and why Brian and I have been stopped this year? I think it probably does. And I think that the conversations our country has been having about the role of race in minor incidents, such as mine, and life-and-death ones, must continue.

‘Django Unchained’ Actress Daniele Watts Pleads No Contest To Charges  was originally published on theurbandaily.com

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