Comedians Eric Andre, Clayton English Sue Atlanta Airport Cops Over Racially Motivated Stops

Lawsuits like these are filed all the time. Why? Because, just like out in the open world, opportunistic officers find it easy to coerce people into questioning and searches with the implication they’ll be delayed reaching their destination (or worse) if they don’t.

And, like everywhere else in the US, many of these stops are racially motivated, disproportionately targeting minorities. Minorities have more at stake and, consequently, are often more likely to view the searches and questioning as an inevitable part of the American experience.

But few lawsuits alleging racial bias and unconstitutional searches are filed by famous people. That’s because most cops know better than to screw with people with the resources to fight back.

Last year, comedian Eric Andre was quasi-apprehended by Clayton County law enforcement officers while trying to board a flight in Atlanta. The tactics used by law enforcement in this airport aren’t unusual. But they are especially devious. Cops hang out on the jet bridges connecting the terminal to the airplane, giving their targets limited options. There’s really nowhere else to go. And officers know it.

Andre complained about his involuntary encounter after it occurred early last year, claiming it was racial profiling. The Clayton County Police Department responded with a statement perhaps prematurely exonerating it of any wrongdoing.

“Mr. Andre chose to speak with investigators during the initial encounter,” the department said in a statement released to local news outlets. “During the encounter, Mr. Andre voluntarily provided the investigators information as to his travel plans. Mr. Andre also voluntarily consented to a search of his luggage but the investigators chose not to do so. Investigators identified that there was no reason to continue a conversation and therefore terminated the encounter.”

The department’s use of the word “voluntary” is incredibly suspect. On a narrow jet bridge, people are going to feel compelled to cooperate, even if officers don’t make any explicit threats.

The same thing apparently happened to another black comedian, Clayton (no relation to the county) English. Both comedians make the same allegation: cops stopped them on jet bridges because they were the only black people boarding these flights. Both were subjected to questioning about drug trafficking and multiple requests for consent to search them and their carry-on luggage. (h/t Josie Duffy Rice)

These two encounters are the subject matter of this recent lawsuit [PDF], helpfully provided to us by Axios. (The Associated Press delivered some of the earliest reporting but apparently found it impossible to secure a copy of the lawsuit.)

The lawsuit targets both the county and the individual officers who performed these stops, alleging the Clayton County PD’s “drug interdiction” program is nothing more than a big bag of constitutional violations that allow officers to pretend its biased stops are actually “random.”

But there’s nothing about these stops that’s random. That pretense is easily destroyed by actual statistics.

Although CCPD officers reportedly tell stopped passengers that they have been chosen at “random,” CCPD’s own records make clear that the officers conducting the jet bridge interdiction program select their targets based on race. From September 2020 through April 2021—a period that captures the stops of Plaintiffs Eric André and Clayton English—CCPD conducted 378 passenger interdictions in jet bridges where department records list the race of the passenger stopped. Of those, 56% of stopped passengers were Black. Given that only 8% of American airline passengers are Black (and given that the Atlanta Airport fairly represents that population), the probability of this happening randomly is staggering: significantly less than one in one hundred trillion.

Not only is it racially biased, the interdiction program is completely useless.

With regard to drugs, CCPD records show that, over an eight-month span that captures the period at issue in this complaint, CCPD officers conducting jet bridge stops found fewer than 0.08 pounds (36 grams) of illegal drugs, plus 6 prescription pills with no valid prescription, and CCPD only brought charges against two passengers.

Maybe it’s useless because officer bias leads them to stop the sort of people they think look like criminals (darker, swarthier, etc.) rather than actual criminals. Or maybe it’s because the drug interdiction program isn’t really about interdicting drugs. It’s about intercepting cash.

As for the currency seized in this same time frame by officers implementing the jet bridge interdiction program—totaling over $1,000,000—all but one of the passengers from whom CCPD seized money were allowed to continue on their travels. 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.

Hopefully, Clayton County’s finest and whatever representatives it sends to represent the elected will be given a chance to explain away all of these inconvenient facts.

And hopefully it will get a chance to explain how actions like these contribute to the claimed voluntary-ness of these sky bridge stops.

After moving him to the side of the jet bridge, one officer stood on Mr. English’s left while the other stood on his right, effectively blocking his path onto the plane.

One officer asked Mr. English to hand over his ID and boarding pass. Mr. English complied. He understood that he did not have any choice.

While holding his ID and boarding pass, the officers continued to ask Mr. English if he was carrying illegal drugs and began to ask questions about his profession, his reason for traveling to Los Angeles, and how long he planned to stay.

Possibly free to go… but to where? The officers had his ID and boarding pass. Beyond English was the plane he wanted to board. Behind him was a terminal that would become a particularly hellish purgatory without an ID or boarding pass. Only after English “consented” to a search of his luggage was he given back his ID and boarding pass and allowed to board the plane.

It’s a compulsory experience, purposely designed to appear consensual — one that uses all the right words and phrases that stop just short of demanding compliance while implying very explicitly that refusal isn’t really an option.

By ambushing passengers in this manner, the Unit’s officers compound the enormous, preexisting compulsion to cooperate with airport law enforcement by exploiting the passengers’ fear that they will create an untoward scene or will appear guilty, subversive, or dangerous to their fellow passengers. By design, all of these factors exert tremendous coercive pressure on an individual passenger in the jet bridge to acquiesce to the officers’ wishes. Those pressures are even greater for persons of color, given the history of racial profiling by airport security officers.

The comedians are hoping to find the drug interdiction program run by the CCPD to be declared unconstitutional. And they want each involved officer held personally responsible for violating their rights. We’ll see how many of these claims survive the first motion to dismiss (immunity of multiple varieties will be invoked), but the lawsuit — even if it ends up being tossed — puts plenty of uncomfortable facts on the record. And hopefully, if nothing else, it will lead to Clayton County abandoning this useless cash grab of a program, or at least, engaging in more oversight of officers’ actions.