Macy’s has agreed to pay New York State $600,000 to settle a complaint that its New York stores racially profiled and unlawfully handcuffed customers suspected of shoplifting.

The settlement follows an investigation by State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. Under it, Macy’s East, which owns and operates 29 Macy’s department stores in New York, will also change its security practices.

In a press release, Spitzer said under the terms of the settlement, Macy’s will “ensure that race and ethnicity play no role in Macy’s security efforts to identify and process suspected shoplifters.”

Spitzer’s office began probing Macy’s security practices in July, 2003, after receiving complaints from black and Latino customers who said they were targeted for particular scrutiny. Black and Latino customers complained of being followed, questioned, and/or searched based solely on their race or ethnicity.

“The Attorney General found that the vast majority of persons detained on suspicion of shoplifting were black or Latino, and that their representation in the pool of detainees couldn’t be explained either by customer demographics or local crime rates. The very high percentage of blacks and Latinos among detainees at Macy’s –– over 75 percent at most of the stores examined –– is significantly higher than the percentage of blacks and Latinos shopping in those Macy’s stores,” the release added.

“Although the official policy of Macy’s is to handcuff detainees only after an individual determination of dangerousness is made, virtually every detainee suspected of shoplifting was handcuffed in a number of New York City stores, regardless of the person’s age, size, or behavior. Further, at one upstate store in which security personnel had the discretion to handcuff individual detainees, Latinos were five times more likely and Blacks were nearly three times more likely to be handcuffed than white detainees,” it said.

(Compiled from a press release by M. Chooki)