Comedian Eric Andre Files A Lawsuit After Allegedly Being Racially Profiled At The Atlanta Airport

We’re used to seeing comedian Eric André performing publicity stunts for laughs on a regular basis, but what he allegedly experienced at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta was not amusing at all. Eric claims back in 2021, as he walked the dreaded shaky corridor from the gate to the doors of the plane, he was stopped by two men. He probably thought to himself, “I don’t have time for autographs,” but unfortunately for Eric, neither did they. Instead, they stopped him for a quick search to see if he was carrying illegal drugs onto the flight. That’s when Eric’s Woke-O-Meter rang out louder than the bells of freedom, especially once he realized he was the only Black person around at the time. Now, he’s calling upon the power of the ancestors to help him sue the pants off of Clayton County Police Department for their blatant racial profiling.

According to The Washington Post, Eric had just finished a gig in Atlanta in April of 2021 when everything happened. And it’s a damn shame too, because Hartsfield-Jackson has been an entire shitshow of an experience during the pandemic, so I’m sure all Eric wanted to do was get on the plane, get drunk and watch Hustlers on his flight back home. Instead, two men thought that he was the real hustler trying to sneak illegal substances onto the flight.

On his way down the narrow bridge from the gate to the airplane, he says, two plainclothes officers emerged, flashed their badges and asked the comedian whether he was carrying illegal drugs. André, who says he was the only Black person he saw on the jet bridge, denied having drugs. Still, he said, the officers continued to question him.

“There’s all these people having to squeeze past us on this narrow, awkward jet bridge as I look like this suspicious perpetrator,” André told The Washington Post on Tuesday. “And I’ve done absolutely nothing wrong. I’m literally coming home from a work trip.”

Here’s Eric’s tweet from back then:

@Atlanta_Police “I was just racially profiled by two plain clothes Atlanta PD police in @Delta terminal T3 at the Atlanta airport. They stopped me on the way down the bridge to the plane for a “random” search and asked they could search me for drugs. I told them no. Be careful.

— Eric Andre (@ericandre) April 21, 2021

Eric isn’t the only one who allegedly suffered the same fate. Fellow comedian Clayton English says the same exact thing happened to him while he was at Hartsfield-Jackson six months prior to Eric’s incident. Now, the two of them are hoping they can make a judge and jury laugh heartily after slapping Clayton County PD upside its head with a lawsuit.

On Tuesday, the two comedians filed a lawsuit against Clayton County’s police department and district attorney’s office, alleging the agencies violated their constitutional rights. It asks the court to declare unconstitutional a Clayton County Police Department practice that the lawsuit says involves officers stopping passengers on jet bridges, questioning them and even searching their bags in a purported effort to combat drug trafficking, all while calling the stops “consensual.”

The lawsuit argues that, in reality, the stops are not consensual. Officers rather coerce passengers into cooperating, the lawsuit argues, and they disproportionately target Black passengers. More than half of those stopped during an eight-month period were Black, though only 8 percent of American airline passengers are Black, according to the lawsuit.

Meanwhile, the old white lady who actually did sneak one million dollars worth of boogie sugar onto Eric’s flight is reading about his ordeal and thinking to herself, “That’s a damn shame.”

Pic: INSTARImages