BARNEYS AND COPS RACIALLY HARASS ANOTHER YOUNG BLACK SHOPPER OVER EXPENSIVE PURCHASE

‘Barneys busted me for buying $2,500 bag’
KAYLA PHILLIPS & TRAYON CHRISTIAN
Another young black Barneys customer came forward Wednesday to say she had been racially profiled by snooty store clerks after making a pricey purchase.

Brooklyn resident Kayla Phillips, 21, had a déjà vu moment when she saw news coverage of a black, 19-year-old Queens student who was cuffed by cops after buying a $350 designer belt at Barneys.

Phillips said she had a chillingly similar encounter with police after leaving the Madison Avenue shopping mecca in February with a $2,500 Céline handbag she’d just splurged on.

“As I was walking into the train station, four undercover police officers attacked me,” Phillips said.

“They asked me why I used a debit card and why it didn’t have my name on it,” she said of her temporary Bank of America card.

A frightened Phillips called her mom, who told The New York Post cops had asked, “What are you doing here in Manhattan? Where’d you get the money to buy that expensive bag?”

Her mother, Wendy Straker, said the police were clearly on the phone with a Barneys rep who was feeding them information about her daughter’s transaction.

When she showed police her ID and her new debit card, which had arrived in the mail that morning, they let her go.

On Tuesday, black, 19-year-old Queens student Trayon Christian sued Barneys for allegedly calling the cops on him after he purchased a $350 designer belt in April.

The undercover detectives asked him, “how a young black man such as himself could afford to purchase such an expensive belt,” according to the suit.
“Jay Z is getting ready to do a campaign with Barneys, but they’re looking at these African-American kids like they’re thieves,” Straker said.

Phillips is suing the NYPD for $5 million. A spokeswoman for the city’s Law Department said she would review the claim.

A store spokeswoman said of the belt incident, “No employee of Barneys New York was involved in the pursuit of any action with the individual other than the sale.”

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