Nice little rights you have there... BASIAHTT
by digby
I'm a coward so if the police ask me for ID I'm going to give it to them even though in California it's not legally required if they have no good reason to ask. (When you're driving you do have to.) Until recently I didn't even carry my ID if I was walking at the beach, as I do every night. But my husband was stopped a while back by LAPD on the Venice boardwalk and got detained for an hour and rousted pretty rudely because he didn't have his driver's license on him. (There was a report of a middle aged homeless man sleeping in someone's garage in the neighborhood who was wearing jeans and a blue hoodie --- like my husband. Like a thousand other people on the boardwalk that day ...)
Anyway, since then, I've always carried my ID with me. And it irks me that I have to. I wish I was brave enough to face down armed police and assert my rights but I'm not. I'm not brave enough argue with an armed gang member either and the hostile, aggressive way these interactions happen feel very similar. The smart move in both cases is to keep your head down, do as you're told and hope you get out of there unscathed because if either cops or gang members want to exercise their power over you they can mess up your life --- even take it. (Of course police are just as likely to use a little electro-shock ultra violence on you to make sure you comply, but you won't die from that. Probably.)
Here's someone who took the more difficult path and got herself handcuffed and harrassed. Why? She was a black woman kissing her white boyfriend, fully clothed, in their car:
A Django Unchained actress is claiming she was 'handcuffed and detained' by police after being mistaken for a prostitute as she kissed her white husband.
Daniele Watts, who played slave CoCo in the award-winning film, posted the news on her Facebook page on 2 September and said her arm was cut when she was handcuffed.
Watts and her husband Brian James Lucas claim that they were kissing on a Hollywood street when police were called and they were asked to show their ID card to which Watts refused.
Watts wrote on her Facebook page: 'Today I was handcuffed and detained by 2 police officers from the Studio City Police Department after refusing to agree that I had done something wrong by showing affection, fully clothed, in a public place.'
She also posted a photo of crying as she stood in the street wearing patterned shorts, a t-shirt with 'New York' written on it and running shoes with a policeman next to her.
Watts, who plays Martin Lawrence's daughter on the new FX comedy Partners, continued: 'When the officer arrived, I was standing on the sidewalk by a tree.
'I was talking to my father on my cell phone.
'I knew that I had done nothing wrong, that I wasn't harming anyone, so I walked away.
'A few minutes later, I was still talking to my dad when 2 different police officers accosted me and forced me into handcuffs.
'As I was sitting in the back of the police car, I remembered the countless times my father came home frustrated or humiliated by the cops when he had done nothing wrong.
'I allowed myself to be honest about my anger, frustration, and rage as tears flowed from my eyes.
'The tears I cry 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.
Separately her chef husband posted on his Facebook page that he thought that the person who called the police had decided they looked like a prostitute and a client.
He wrote: 'From the questions that he asked me as D was already on her phone with her dad, I could tell that whoever called on us (including the officers), saw a tatted RAWKer white boy and a hot bootie shorted black girl and thought we were a H* (prostitute) & a TRICK (client).
'What an assumption to make!!!Because of my past experience with the law, I gave him my ID knowing we did nothing wrong and when they asked D for hers, she refused to give it because they had no right to do so.
'So they handcuffed her and threw her roughly into the back of the cop car until they could figure out who she was. In the process of handcuffing her, they cut her wrist, which was truly NOT COOL!!!'
An LAPD public information officer said there was no record of the incident as Watts was not arrested or brought into the station for questioning, according to the Chicago Tribune.
There are pictures, so it happened. The question is why the police needed to do anything in that situation? Once they talked to both of them it should have been clear that no law was being broken. Her refusing to give her ID was irrelevant at that stage. They simply decided they needed to know who she was --- just in case there was some reason they needed to know who she was. That's not legal.
Anyway, the.story made me embarrassed. Here I am a privileged older white woman being afraid to challenge police. I can't imagine how much courage it takes to be African American and do it. My God that's brave. My hat's off to her and others who are willing to take a stand. That's real patriotism in my book.
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