Comedian Eric André Files Lawsuit Against Atlanta Airport Police
(CNN) – Police officers stopped Eric André as he boarded a flight from Atlanta to Los Angeles in April 2021 and, a few months earlier, the same thing happened to another Black comedian in the same place, a lawsuit alleges.André and fellow comedian Clayton English filed the lawsuit claiming the stops were the result of racial profiling.“Police officers came out of nowhere in like, almost like an ambush style and started, singled me out.
I was the only person of color on the jet bridge at the time,” André said in a news conference Tuesday.“They singled me out.
They asked me if I was selling drugs, transporting drugs, what kind of drugs I have on me,” he said.A lawsuit filed Tuesday by André and English alleges that this stop was part of an anti-drug trafficking program carried out by the Clayton County Police Department in Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport that unfairly targets Black fliers.“It was clearly racial profiling.
The experience was humiliating and dehumanizing, degrading, I had all the other passengers squeezing by me on this claustrophobic jet bridge gawking at me like I was a perpetrator,” André said.Police stopped English on a flight, also to Los Angeles, in October 2020.CNN has reached out to both the police department and the Atlanta Department of Aviation for comment.“I was almost on the plane when, in the jet bridge two officers popped out, showed their badges, and started asking questions whether I had illegal drugs like cocaine, and I feel cornered in a jet bridge and I felt the need to comply,” English said in the news conference.After the incident involving André, Clayton County police denied any wrongdoing, CNN affiliate WSB-TV reported.The station published this statement released then by the.
