Comedian Clayton English is thanking Tyler Perry for putting a brighter spotlight on his racial profiling lawsuit ... and says his run-in with airport cops has him thinking some Black cops absolutely discriminate against Black citizens.
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00:00We know what you say based on the lawsuit, but why don't you kind of explain your experience,
00:08what happened to you?
00:09I'm leaving from Atlanta to LA.
00:10This is after I've gone through TSA.
00:11This is after I've gone through the checkpoint.
00:12I've given the lady my ticket.
00:13She scanned it.
00:14I entered the jet bridge.
00:15And you know how some jet bridges kind of like wind around, and they might have a little
00:16corner or whatever?
00:17As soon as I hit the corner, there's two officers, and they stopped me.
00:18They don't stop anybody.
00:19They're like, what are you doing?
00:20And I'm like, what are you doing?
00:21And they're like, what are you doing?
00:22And I'm like, what are you doing?
00:23And they're like, what are you doing?
00:24And I'm like, what are you doing?
00:26They asked me, hey, where you traveling to?
00:32Can we search your bag?
00:33It's just a barrage of questions, real fast.
00:35It really fell, I remember it because the officers, it was a tall Asian officer and
00:42a short black officer.
00:43It was like a reverse rush hour.
00:45and that's what stuck out in my mind.
00:48No, it was like, hold on, man, it's Chris Chan.
00:52What's going on?
00:53And they just kept asking me these questions
00:55and I'm just trying to get on my flight.
00:58They searched my bag, they didn't find anything.
01:01And so I'm just really kind of left with my thoughts
01:04on like, what was that about?
01:06It didn't make sense.
01:07And so when I saw what happened to Eric Andre,
01:10I reached out to him and it turns out
01:12it was a very similar scenario.
01:13You mentioned that one of the two officers was black
01:17and the population in Atlanta is significantly black
01:21and you would think that if the police department,
01:25which has black officers.
01:26You think that the black officers
01:28would speak up on behalf of the black community?
01:30Yeah, I mean, and I'm not doubting what you're saying.
01:32I'm just, that's why it is really surprising to me.
01:36I'll put it like this.
01:37I think, you know, and I might catch black boy,
01:39but I think some black officers
01:41are more blue than they are black.
01:44So what goes with that job?
01:47You know, I think they, I think being a police officer,
01:51certain stereotypes are ingrained in that.
01:54So, and my thing is, I don't even know
01:58if it was racially profiling as far as race,
02:00but I think it was profiling people
02:02who look like they have cash on them.
02:04Are you the person who brought this to Tyler's attention?
02:07I know you've worked with him on a lot of his productions.
02:11I'm just wondering how he got on board with this.
02:13Was it just something he read
02:13or did you actually have a conversation with him?
02:15The people that are kind of handling the lawsuit for us
02:18reached out to a lot of people
02:19and he was one of the people that just jumped on early on
02:22with a lot of other people that were way bigger than me.
02:25And my whole thing was when I saw what happened to Eric,
02:28I just texted him, comedian to comedian,
02:30hey man, that same thing happened to me.
02:31So I never thought it would get, you know, to this level.
02:34But when he said he was doing something about it,
02:36I was like, oh, hell yeah.