New York investigates ‘shop and frisk’ claims
NEW YORK — New York state’s attorney general on Tuesday launched an investigation into Macy’s and Barneys New York, where black customers complained that they were stopped by police after making luxury purchases.
The city’s tabloids have nicknamed the practice “shop and frisk,” a takeoff on the controversial New York police crime-fighting tactic “stop and frisk,” which critics contend amounts to racial profiling.
State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman gave the two department store chains until Friday to turn over information about their policies for detaining and questioning customers based on race. Both department stores have fired back, denying any involvement in the four incidents that ignited the controversy.
“This was an operation of the NewYork City Police Department,” Macy’s spokeswoman Elina Kazan said in a statement.
Barneys Chief Executive Mark Lee struck a similar theme. “We believe that no Barneys employees were involved in those incidents,” Lee said after a meeting in Harlem with civil rights activist Al Sharpton. “No one from Barneys brought them to the attention of our internal security and no one from Barneys reached out to external authorities.”
NYPD chief spokesman John McCarthy countered those claims, saying that in both Barneys incidents and one Macy’s case involving actor Rob Brown, officers acted on information provided by store security.
“In both instances, the NYPD were conducting unrelated investigations” in the store, McCarthy said.
Schneiderman’s office said it is investigating four complaints from black shoppers who said last week that at various times in the past eight months they were stopped by police after shopping at the two stores.
“The alleged repeated behavior of your employees raises troubling questions about your company’s commitment to that ideal,” wrote Kristen Clarke, who heads the attorney general’s civil rights bureau.
Sharpton and other leaders called Tuesday for a summit with a “broad section” of city retail executives.
“This must be done immediately,” Sharpton said after meeting with Lee. “Not weeks — days, hours. There needs to be a meeting.”
Barneys and the New York City Police Department were named in a lawsuit filed last week by Trayon Christian, of Queens. The lawsuit said police had detained him for two hours after he bought a $349 Ferragamo belt, and that they released him without charging him.
Kayla Phillips, a 21-yearold nursing school student, said she was surrounded by four undercover police officers in February after leaving Barneys with a $2,500 Celine handbag she had purchased.
Two Macy’s shoppers have made similar complaints. One was Brown of HBO’s “Treme,” who said he was handcuffed and held for an hour after purchasing a $1,350 Movado watch for his mother, the Daily News said.
The fourth “shop and frisk” complaint was filed by Art Palmer, 56, an exercise trainer from Brooklyn. He told the Daily Newsthat he was surrounded by police, who demanded to see identification after he used his credit card to buy $320 worth of Polo shirts andties at Macy’s in April. Police are investigating.
New York’s Civilian Complaint Review Board is investigating allegations of improper police stops of Palmer and Phillips.
Crime statistics show grand larceny has risen 31.6 percent during the past two years in the Midtown North precinct, which includes Macy’s flagship store in Herald Square, and is up nearly 4 percent in the Upper East Side’s 19th precinct, which includes Barneys New York.