#BoycottHoustons is spreading on social media, again, after Asia’h Sharrell Epperson, an actress on OWN-TV’s “Greanleaf,” and Brittany Marie Lucio and Erica Walker, also actresses, went to Houston’s restaurant in Atlanta after hours to use the restroom and an officer forcefully tried to remove them from the facilities.
This isn’t the first time Houston’s has had a problem with Black clientele. Last year, Rapper T.I. organized a boycott of the restaurant that’s now shut down on Lenox Road in Atlanta when a staffer threw out a group of Black women, he said.
On May 13, a police officer was working an extra job doing security for the restaurant. When he arrived, the shift manager asked the male officer to go into the ladies’ room to retrieve the women, claiming they did not respond to two requests for them to leave the restroom,
according to Atlanta police.
He confronted the three women.
The officer grabbed one of the women, Lucio, by the wrist and said, “Let’s go,” according to the report. Lucio, surprised by the officer’s aggressiveness, pulled away from his grip and yelled, “Get your hands off of me.”
On Tuesday, attorney Gerald A. Griggs, an Atlanta lawyer, posted a video Epperson filmed during the incident on his Instagram account.
A violent exchange then occurred, and the women were arrested and charged with criminal trespassing. Lucio was also charged with felony obstruction.
Actresses Asia’h Sharrell Epperson, Brittany Marie Lucio and Erica WalkerFulton County Ga. Jail
Epperson told TMZ she was shocked the police arrested her and her friends, instead of the officer. She said a Houston’s staffer “gladly let them use the restroom, and never asked them to leave prior to the violent incident,” according to the publication.
“We are seriously concerned about the level of force that was used,” Griggs told
11Alive. “We believe they were profiled and subject to police brutality.”
Epperson, Lucio and Walker were released on bond and plan on filing a civil rights lawsuit against the Atlanta Police Department.
