Civil rights leaders angrily criticized the city's growing 'shop and frisk' scandal. This scandal stems from two major retailers' being accused of profiling its African-American shoppers, who said police officers detained them after their purchase of luxury items.

National Action Network President Reverend Al Sharpton said, "We've gone from stop-and-frisk to shop-and-frisk." He allued to the criminal control policy that was later denounced as a form of racial profiling.

One of the representatives of the network had set a meeting with Barneys New York CEO Mark Lee, after reports came from two African American shoppers who said they were detained by NYPD operatives and accused for fraud after their purchase of luxury items from the store.

A third incident. this time HBO's "Treme" actor Rob Brown reported to the New York Daily News that allegedly he was 'paraded' through the midtown Manhattan store location in handcuffs last June and was detained for an hour after he purchased a USD1,350 gold Movado watch for his mother. He came forward after reading news accounts of others who had been similarly treated at Barney's. Brown said he begged cops to check his ID, but they kept repeating 'Your card is fake. You're going to jail.'

Retailer Barney's New York publicly apologized this week while Macy's for its part said it was conducting an internal investigation on the matter.