Eric André Sues Police For Racial Profiling, Seizing Cash At Atlanta Airport

Even though he’s not Martin Luther King, Eric André is now fighting to end a civil rights nightmare. After the comedian said he was racially profiled at Atlanta’s airport, André filed a federal lawsuit earlier this month to shut down that police program. A joint effort between the Clayton County Police Department and district attorney’s office, this airport interdiction unit has officers intercepting and interrogating travelers on the jet bridge right before they can board their flights.

Not only are the stops “profoundly coercive,” they’ve been “financially lucrative” for law enforcement. By exploiting “permissive” civil forfeiture laws, Clayton County law enforcement seized more than $1 million in cash and money orders from August 2020 to April 2021. Nearly all of that money was taken from the innocent: Only 8% of passengers who had their cash confiscated were actually charged with a crime. And in Georgia, once property has been forfeited, police and prosecutors can keep up to 100% of the proceeds—a clear incentive to police for profit.

“Neither Georgia residents nor travelers are safer because of these unlawful, discriminatory stops,” said Richard Deane, one of the attorneys representing André. “What CCPD appears to have created is a cash-grab scheme operated out of the busiest airport in the world.”

Back in April 2021, after a shoot for The Righteous Gemstones in Charleston, South Carolina, André was flying home to Los Angeles with a connecting flight in Atlanta. As he prepared to board in Atlanta, everything seemed normal at first. A Delta agent scanned his ticket and André headed down the jet bridge tunnel with the other Business Class passengers.

Suddenly, two plainclothes Clayton County officers singled André out and blocked his path. The officers began badgering André with questions and asked if he was selling drugs, buying drugs, or on drugs. One of the officers then asked to search his luggage.

André responded, “Do I have to say ‘yes?’” When the officer said no, André refused and got on the plane.

Incredibly, Eric André wasn’t the only Black comedian singled out by police at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. Joining André’s lawsuit is Clayton English, who was also intercepted and interrogated by police on a Delta jet bridge, despite doing nothing wrong. Both men described their experiences with police as “degrading.”

The officers responsible were part of the Clayton County Narcotics Unit-Airport Investigations Group, which was ostensibly created to combat drug trafficking. But since airport security has been dramatically bolstered since 9/11, searching passengers for drugs on the jet bridge is a “senseless” interdiction strategy, the lawsuit argued. According to open records requests, between August 2020 and April 2021, police stopped more than 400 travelers, over half of whom were Black.

Yet law enforcement confiscated a pitiful amount of narcotics from a mere three travelers: just 10 grams of marijuana and mushrooms, 26 grams of “suspected THC gummies,” and six pills that lacked a valid prescription. All told, that’s less than one-tenth of a pound, with a hit rate of well under 1%.

Although the drug busts were a bust, combining jet bridge interdictions with civil forfeiture did provide a “financial windfall.” Generating revenue by shaking down anxious passengers, the lawsuit noted, “demands relatively little investment of resources from the department and its partners,” but at the same time, “transfers the onus to the owner to reclaim the property.”

Unlike criminal cases, which require proof beyond a reasonable doubt and guarantee an attorney to those who can’t afford one, civil forfeiture lacks those basic protections. Instead, in Georgia, prosecutors need only show that there is a “preponderance of the evidence” (i.e. more likely than not) that a property is connected to criminal activity.

And since the cost of hiring an attorney can often cost more than the property itself, many owners are forced to walk away. Little wonder then that among the Atlanta airport seizures, owners only fought back for their seized cash in less than a third of cases.

Unfortunately, Clayton County police are hardly alone in viewing flyers as little more than ATMs. The Institute for Justice currently has multiple class-action lawsuits against the TSA, DEA, and Customs and Border Protection for their routine confiscation of cash. According to an IJ report, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (which includes Customs and Border Protection and ICE) conducted over 30,000 cash seizures worth more than $2 billion at the nation’s airports from 2000 to 2016. For 69% of those seizures, no arrests were made.

To defend its tactics, Clayton County argued that its stops were both “random” and “consensual encounters.”

“I didn’t see any other Black people boarding at the time,” André said in a release. “It’s hard to believe I was selected at ‘random’ for questioning.”

Moreover, stopping travelers on an airplane’s jet bridge is a “uniquely coercive” method, his lawsuit elaborated. “Reasonable individuals interdicted by CCPD officers in jet bridges would not and do not believe they are free to decline the officers’ requests, or to ignore and navigate around the officers absent affirmative permission,” the complaint asserted. That is especially true when the stop occurs on a “cramped, highly-secure jet bridge,” a setting that further pressures passengers “to acquiesce to the officers’ wishes.”

“It definitely did not feel like a ‘consensual encounter,’”André said at a press conference. “When two cops stop you, you don’t feel like you have the right to leave, especially when they start interrogating you about drugs.”