Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty
Final yr, I used to be steps from finishing what's, for many Individuals, an earthly a part of air journey—strolling down the jet bridge from the airport gate to the airplane—when the police stopped me.
They didn’t have any motive to cease me (a reality they've admitted). It’s simply a part of Flying Whereas Black.
Shortly after I entered the jet bridge, two cops stepped in entrance of me, blocking my path. They began rapid-fire questioning: Was I carrying any unlawful medicine? Cocaine? Meth? Capsules? Why was I touring? May they see my ID?
I didn’t see every other Black folks boarding at the moment.
The officers have been a part of an area Clayton County Police drug interdiction activity pressure, whose job it's to lurk on the finish of jet bridges and accost unsuspecting passengers. Police name these passenger encounters “consensual.” That’s primarily based on the fiction that passengers have the facility to disregard the officers and their questions, although officers have chosen the precise place and time—passing by means of the slim jet bridge—when passengers will really feel least free to disregard them.
All of us study that airport safety is necessary and we must always obey officers. They by no means inform passengers they've a proper to easily ignore them, and it's onerous to think about folks selecting to take action. After which there's the truth that folks of shade are drilled repeatedly in regards to the risks of ignoring police “requests.”
The officers who stopped me that day at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta Worldwide Airport didn't know who I used to be. They'd no motive to suspect me of any crime. After I requested why I used to be being singled out, I used to be advised what Black males are advised each day by police: that it was a “random” search.
Proper.
It was no coincidence that I used to be singled out from a procession of white passengers. I realized later that within the months earlier than my cease, greater than 56 p.c of passengers the duty pressure stopped have been Black, although Black folks comprise solely 8 p.c of home air vacationers.
What are the chances that such a racial disparity may end result from random probability? Lower than one in 100 trillion.
Quickly sufficient the encounter was over, and I used to be boarding the airplane. So, no large deal, proper? Mistaken. Throughout these jiffy, the opposite (white) passengers have been compelled to shimmy round me. They gawked whereas doing so—in spite of everything, I will need to have completed one thing to deserve all of the police consideration. I boarded the airplane completely humiliated, and indignant.
This was not my first expertise with racial profiling. It wasn’t even my first expertise with racial profiling in an airport. Nevertheless it was essentially the most blatant. And the encounter has caught with me ever since. It’s an all-too-personal reminder of simply how a lot work stays to finish so-called “consent” stops and racial profiling, key instruments within the failed Warfare on Medicine, which has poisoned police-community relations, stuffed this nation’s prisons, and damaged Black households aside.
Past its offensiveness, think about simply how ridiculous this police cease was. Clayton County Police have been concentrating on Black males for medicine in one of many least probably locations in America to, effectively, discover medicine—an airport, a constructing of 24/7 surveillance the place officers scour luggage for extreme toothpaste and there are extra cameras than on the TV set I’d simply left. By the point I had reached the jet bridge, my physique had already been scanned head-to-toe, my luggage X-rayed, my identification confirmed a number of occasions.
So, it’s no shock that the Clayton County activity pressure finds virtually no medicine on jet bridges. Of the 402 stops my authorized staff has examined, just one resulted in an arrest.
Eric André speaks at a information convention outdoors the federal courthouse in Atlanta on Tuesday, Oct. 11, 2022, as his attorneys Allegra Lawrence-Hardy, left, and Richard Deane watch.
Kate Brumback/AP
The truth is, my lawsuit argues that this system isn’t designed to grab medicine in any respect—as an alternative, it’s to grab money from air vacationers.
Packages just like the one on the Atlanta airport have existed for generations to gas this nation’s Warfare on Medicine. Focusing on Black passengers retains the money flowing, the money retains the Warfare on Medicine going, and the Warfare on Medicine retains communities of shade from thriving.
This week, I sued Clayton County to show and finish this program and assist break that cycle. Along with The Policing Challenge at NYU Faculty of Legislation, I've requested a federal court docket to search out that the jet bridge cease violated two core constitutional rights: to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, and free from racial discrimination in policing.
I hope my lawsuit additionally illuminates how pervasive these police practices are—how typically they happen, who's participating in comparable packages, and what function, if any, airways have performed.
This lawsuit most likely gained’t finish what police proceed to name “consensual stops,” and it virtually definitely gained’t finish racial profiling in better Atlanta—these practices are too entrenched in legislation enforcement. Nevertheless it’s essential that these illegal practices be delivered to gentle, known as out for what they're, and that we work to finish them wherever we will.