*Comedians Eric André and Clayton English, who are Black, are suing the Clayton County Police Department in Georgia after being racially profiled at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.
In the lawsuit filed Tuesday, obtained by TMZ, Eric and Clayton claim they were racially profiled on separate occasions in 2021 and 2020. They were both on the bridge from their gate to the airplane when they were singled out by police and had their luggage searched.
According to English, he was preparing to board a flight to Los Angeles when two plainclothes officers stopped him and asked if he was carrying any illegal drugs. The officers interrogated him on the spot and conducted a search of his carry-on bag. English said during a press conference Tuesday that he felt obligated to comply if he “wanted everything to go smoothly.”
Meanwhile, André, who lives in L.A., says he was the only person of color on the jet bridge when police targeted and harassed him.
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“The whole experience was traumatizing,” he said, Axios reports. “I felt belittled, and I want to use my resources and my platform to bring national attention to this incident so that it stops.”
Clayton County officers are accused of using the department’s jet bridge interdiction program between fall 2020 and spring 2021 to conduct unconstitutional searches on (mostly Black) passengers. During an eight-month span, the lawsuit alleges that “out of the 378 stops where the passengers’ race was documented, 56% were Black and 68% were people of color,” Axios writes.
The lawsuit also notes that cops recovered only 36 grams of illegal drugs from these stops and two passengers were charged with offenses. According to the suit, more than $1 million was seized from 25 passengers through civil asset forfeitures, per Axios.
“These seizures do not meaningfully combat drug trafficking, but they do provide a financial windfall for the department by taking advantage of the permissive civil standards for asset forfeitures and the reluctance of individuals (particularly individuals of color) to challenge seizures,” the lawsuit reads.
The lawsuit calls on the court to declare that it’s unconstitutional for police officers to stop passengers on the bridges and question them about illegal drugs. Clayton County Police Chief Kevin Roberts and five other officers are named as defendants in the lawsuit.
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