Alanna Gillis 

Opinoins Editor

amg7393@psu.edu

In January of this year, famed “Black Panther” director Ryan Coogler was detained in Atlanta after a bank teller suspected he was robbing the bank. The Bank of America teller, whose identity has not been released, noticed an alert on Coogler’s account, as he was trying to withdraw more than $10,000. Due to the large amount of money being withdrawn, Coogler had written on the back of the withdrawal slip that he would like the money to be counted discreetly. 

Police were called to the scene, and promptly detained two of Coogler’s colleagues, who had been waiting outside in a car for his business in the bank to finish. They were placed in the back of a police vehicle. 

In body cam footage that was recently released, and can be viewed on Youtube, the situation is shown in even more light. Officers drew their weapons on Coogler before placing him in cuffs. The body cam footage shows the surprise on Coogler’s face. He was then escorted to a police vehicle sitting outside the bank. 

On the video, Coogler can be heard saying, “If you run my name, you’ll understand why you should take off these cuffs,” while he was being held against the vehicle. 

After being placed in the backseat of the cruiser, Coogler explained that he was trying to prevent drawing a lot of attention to himself with his transaction. “If I don’t write out on the note how much I want out, and that I don’t want it ran through the money counter right on the desk,” he explained, “the whole bank ends up looking at me.”

Coogler was uncuffed minutes later.

In a statement given this March about the incident, Coogler spoke of the incident, “This situation never should have happened. However, Bank of America worked with me and addressed it to my satisfaction and we have moved on.” 

Bank of America responded, saying “We deeply regret that his incident occurred. It never should have happened and we have apologized to Mr. Coogler.” 

Coogler was in Georgia at the time, working on the “Black Panther” sequel, “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.”