A black New York City teenager with no arrest record says police handcuffed him and brought him to the police station for questioning after a Barney’s department store clerk assumed that a young black man could not afford to buy an expensive belt.

Trayon Christian, 19, a college student from Queens, is suing Barneys department store and the New York Police Department.

The New York Post reports Trayon Christian, a freshman at the NYC College of Technology from Corona, Queens, had been saving up money from a part-time job to buy a designer belt for $350 designer from Barneys in April.

The lawsuit alleges that the Barneys clerk called the cops when he assumed Trayon Christian couldn’t afford the $350 designer belt even though he had paid for it.

Michael Palillo, Trayon Christian’s lawyer told the New York Post “His only crime was being a young black man.”

Trayon Christian had been saving up his paychecks from a part-time job at the NYC College of Technology to buy the Salvatore Ferragamo at the Barneys luxury department store on Madison Avenue. The lawsuit, which was filed in Manhattan Supreme Court on Tuesday, says that then the young man left Barneys, undercover officers grabbed him and asked “how a young black man such as himself could afford to purchase such an expensive belt.”

The clerk at Barneys clerk asked Christian for identification when he bought the designer belt and then called the cops saying that the purchase was a fraud.

The lawsuit says Trayon Christian showed the police his identification, his debit card from Chase and the receipt with his name on it, but “In spite of producing such documentation, Christian was told that his identification was false and that he could not afford to make such an expensive purchase.”

The police eventually called Chase, which verified that the card belonged to Christian. The police released the teenager.

Police sources say Trayon Christian has no arrest record.

Trayon Christian returned the belt. He told the New York Post “I didn’t want to have anything to do with it” and said he will never shop at Barneys again.
Barneys has not issued any comment.