On Monday, Barney’s New York, a high-end department store in New York City, agreed to pay over $500,000 to settle claims that it improperly profiled minority customers. This comes after an investigation by the New York state attorney general revealed a “disproportionate” number of black and Latino customers at Barneys were detained for theft.
Barney’s is very similar in clientele, selection, and pricing to Nieman-Marcus and Lord & Taylor. Last year, two black customers at Barneys’ flagship store on 60th Street and Madison Avenue in Manhattan claimed they were stopped by police even though they had done nothing wrong. In March, Trayon Christian bought a $350 Salvatore Ferragamo belt, and had only gotten a few blocks from the store when plainclothes detectives collared him. They claimed that the Chase debit card he’d used to buy the belt was fake. He was detained for two hours before being released. No charges were filed, but Christian found the experience humiliating enough to sue the city, NYPD and Barney’s for discrimination. A month earlier, Kayla Phillips bought a $2,500 handbag with a temporary debit card, and police surrounded her like cats surrounding a mouse. She said she was “stopped, frisked, searched and detained,” but was ultimately released after showing her ID. She wasn’t charged either, but filed a complaint with the NYPD review board.
State attorney general Eric Schneiderman found the incidents disturbing enough to launch an investigation. He asked Barneys CEO Mark Lee to turn over reams of data related to how Barney’s handles suspected shoplifters. In response, Barney’s retained Michael Yaki, a member of the Commission on Civil Rights, to review its policies. Lee himself offered an unreserved apology for the incidents. It also joined several other major New York stores, including Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s, in posting a Customers’ Bill of Rights that states in no uncertain terms that racial profiling is unacceptable, and could potentially be a firing offense.
Schneiderman interviewed several customers and former Barneys employees, and found that the profiling came in response to a dramatic spike in shoplifting and credit card fraud. In response, Barneys’ loss prevention unit singled out minority customers for surveillance. The profiling continued even when store associates told loss prevention agents that they were targeting regular customers. Based on Barneys’ own data, black and Latino customers were stopped and detained at a rate “far greater than their percentage of the store’s customer base.”
As part of the agreement with Schneiderman, Barneys paid a total of $525,000 in fines, costs and penalties. It will also hire an independent anti-profiling consultant for two years, reform its detention policy and make improvements to how it trains employees. While the complaints filed by Christian and Phillips are still ongoing, it’s very likely settlements in those cases will come very soon as well. Schneiderman said that the agreement will “ensure there’s one set of rules” for everyone who goes to this or any other store in New York.
After the ordeals of Christian and Phillips came to light, similar allegations were leveled against Macy’s. Most famously, actor Robert Brown claimed he was stopped and handcuffed for an hour after buying a $1,350 watch for his mother at Macy’s flagship store on Herald Square. Schneiderman has opened an investigation into detention practices at Macy’s as well; that investigation is ongoing.
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Darrell Lucus is a radical-lefty Jesus-lover who has been blogging for change for a decade. Follow him on Twitter @DarrellLucus or connect with him on Facebook.
