City Councilman Jumaane Williams blasted Barneys and Macy’s for not testifying at a Council hearing on shop-and-frisk racial profiling on Wednesday.
“I’m offended that Barneys and Macy’s decided not to be here,” the Brooklyn Democrat said. “I think it’s insulting not only to the City Council but also to the city of New York and the people who shop there.”
Macy’s said, in a letter read into the record at the hearing, that in light of the lawsuit brought by actor Robert Brown “we do not believe it is appropriate for a Macy’s representative to testify at the Council’s hearing.”
The store said it had reached out to Brown, who says he was humiliated and wrongly accused at the Macy’s flagship store in June, but he “has not responded to our request to meet.”
“So far, we have no evidence that Macy’s personnel were even involved in Mr. Brown’s detention or question,” the letter said. “This was an operation of the New York City Police Department.”
Among those who testified was the Rev. Al Sharpton who said he doesn’t believe the stores and the NYPD were not working in tandem when minority group shoppers were stopped.
“There’s something that doesn’t smell right about this,” he said.
Sharpton suggested that critics were picking on Jay Z for his collaboration with Barney’s because he is black.
“If we were going to call on Jay Z to come out of Barneys, we should call on every designer to come out. Why just Jay Z?” Sharpton said. “I really don’t understand why we are talking about one designer whose stuff doesn’t even go in the store yet.”
The city’s Commissioner of Human Rights Patricia Gatling said she has sent letters to 17 stores asking for details about racial profiling complains and their practices in stopping shoppers.
Williams, who is a candidate for City Council Speaker, said the “majority of financial crimes are not committed by black and Latino men.”
“I have not heard of a white man in a suit being profiled in a bank or on Wall Street,” he said. “when it comes to financial crimes, we stop short.”