New York attorney general probes Macy's, Barneys racial profiling claims

New York state's attorney general launched an investigation Tuesday into retailers Macy's Inc and Barneys New York Inc, where black customers complained they were stopped by police after making luxury purchases.

The city's feisty tabloids have nicknamed the practice "shop and frisk," a take-off on the controversial New York police crime-fighting tactic "stop and frisk," which critics say 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.

But both department stores have fired back, denying any involvement in three of the four incidents that have ignited a firestorm of controversy.

"This was an operation of the New York City Police Department," Macy's spokeswoman Elina Kazan said in a statement, adding that store "personnel were not involved" in the incident.

Kazan was not immediately available to respond to questions about a second black shopper's similar allegations about an April incident.

Barneys Chief Executive Mark Lee likewise said his employees had no part in the two incidents involving black customers.

"We believe that no Barneys employees were involved in those incidents," Lee said after a meeting in Harlem with civil rights leader Al Sharpton and members of his National Action Network. "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 the Macy's case, officers were acting on information provided by store security.

"In both instances, the NYPD were conducting unrelated investigations" in the store, Reuters quotes McCarthy as saying.

In letters to Barneys' Lee and Macy's Chief Stores Officer Peter Sachse, released earlier on Tuesday, Schneiderman's office said it is investigating a total of four complaints from black shoppers who said last week that in the last eight months they were stopped by police after shopping at one of 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, in the letters to Lee and Sachse.

Tuesday's meeting between Lee and civil rights leaders was called last Friday, as allegations against Macy's were first being reported.

Sharpton and other leaders on Tuesday called 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."

Wire services