NEW YORK - The Rev. Al Sharpton threatened Saturday to boycott luxury retailer Barneys if the department store doesn’t respond adequately to allegations by black shoppers that they were racially profiled there.
“We’ve gone from stop-and-frisk to shop-and-frisk, and we are not going to take it,” the black civil-rights leader said. “We are not going to live in a town where our money is considered suspect and everyone else’s money is respected.”
Two black Barneys New York customers, Trayon Christian and Kayla Phillips, said last week that they were detained by police after making expensive purchases.
Christian sued Barneys, saying he was accused of fraud after using his debit card to buy a $349 Ferragamo belt in April.
Barneys said Thursday that it had retained a civil-rights expert to help review its procedures. The chief executive officer of Barneys, Mark Lee, offered his “sincere regret and deepest apologies.”
Kirsten John Foy, an official with Sharpton’s National Action Network, said he would meet with Barneys officials on Tuesday to discuss the racial-profiling allegations.
Front Section, Pages 2 on 10/27/2013