Christina Aguilera arrested for drunkenness

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Singer Christina Aguilera was briefly arrested on Tuesday after being found drunk in public and deemed unable to take care of herself, police said.

Aguilera, 30, spent several hours sobering up in a West Hollywood police station before being released. But officials have no intention of prosecuting her, Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department spokesman Steve Whitmore told reporters.

The five-time Grammy Award winning singer was a passenger in a car being driven by her boyfriend in the West Hollywood district when police pulled him over for driving erratically before dawn on Tuesday. Matthew Rutler was arrested on suspicion of drunken driving.

Aguilera was "not capable of taking care of herself. She was incapacitated. She was cooperative. She was not belligerent in any way whatsoever. She was just intoxicated," Whitmore said.

"So, what we do is that we...arrest the individual on a misdemeanor -- public intoxication -- but we have no desire to prosecute. None whatsoever," he added.

The "Beautiful" singer was released about four hours later and was picked up by a friend. "As she got better she said, 'I would just like to leave'," Whitmore said.

Aguilera, a former Disney child performer, filed for divorce in October to end her five-year marriage to music executive Jordan Bratman.

She was widely criticized in February for flubbing the lyrics to the U.S. national anthem at the Super Bowl before a TV audience of more than 100 million people.

In December, she made her debut as a movie actor in the musical "Burlesque" but the film got poor reviews and did disappointing business at the box office.

(Reporting by Jill Serjeant; Editing by Christine Kearney)