The star and her boyfriend were given the opportunity to retract their accusations of racial profiling in an apology letter to the LAPD, but the judge rejected it for being "insincere".
Daniele Watts, the actress who has starred in films such as Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained, has been sentenced to community service of 15 hours along with her boyfriend Brian Lucas.
The couple were arrested in September last year for having sex in public, but were given the opportunity to avoid punishment by apologising to the LAPD officer who arrested them. At the time of the arrest, however, Watts accused the LAPD of racial profiling. Officer Jim Parker, who made the arrest, was accused of assuming that she was a prostitute because she was kissing Lucas (who is white) in public.
Daniele Watts has been sentenced to community service along with her boyfriend
However, witnesses said they called the police because they had seen Watts having sex with Lucas in a car parked on the street. As part of a plea deal, the couple offered no contest to a charge of disturbing the peace in exchange for the initial charge of lewd conduct being dropped.
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At the same time, the sentencing judge told Watts, who has also starred prominently in TV series such as ‘Weeds’ and ‘Partners’, that they could both avoid punishment if she wrote a letter of apology to both the LAPD and the arresting officer for making the accusations.
But it turns out that two letters that Watts submitted were not apologetic enough, after the judge felt they were insincere and passive-aggressive. In the first, according to the Los Angeles Times and DailyMail.com, she only said sorry for disturbing Parker’s coffee break and called his attitude “sarcastic”, and the second was apparently signed off with a love heart.
For his part, Parker was told to attend a disciplinary hearing but chose to retire instead, bringing to an end his 26-year career. He said in reaction to the sentencing that Watts had made a “childish attempt at the blame game” by making the accusations.
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