A group of African-American men are claiming that the staff and security at the Barclays Center arena in Brooklyn, N.Y., have given them shoddy treatment, accused them of skipping out on bills and even had security rush what they believed was their luxury box, the New York Post reports.
The three men, Glen DeFreitas, Sean Scarborough and Jermaine Pratt, filed a $4 million lawsuit in the Brooklyn federal court on Thursday.
According to the Post, the luxury box was purchased for about $1 million by Ludwig's Drug Store in New York. The three pharmacy staffers claim that they have been targeted and treated poorly because they are black.
According to the lawsuit and as reported by the Post, Defreitas alleges that the Barclays senior vice president of suite and ticket sales, Brian Basloe, approached him on several occasions to ask why he was hanging around the exclusive area. "Why are you always here?" he asked, according to the suit. "You've been coming here a lot."
Defreitas informed him that he had box rights and Basloe backed off, according to the suit and the Post.
The trio also claims that their drink and food orders would take hours to be filled and that on Oct. 19 they heard an employee on the radio identifying them as a security threat, according to the Post. Moments later, the men watched as security rushed the wrong box, ordering occupants to the floor. The final blow came after the men ordered a pizza. When employees claimed that the men hadn't paid for the food, they hit them with a $1,000 bill, the Post reports.
Representatives at the Barclays Center say that they have never received a complaint from the men or anyone since they opened and that they don't tolerate this kind of treatment against guests.
Barclays Communications Director Barry Baum told the Post, "We have a zero-tolerance policy for any type of discriminatory behavior. It is against everything that Barclays Center stands for. We take these matters very seriously and will immediately and thoroughly investigate them."
Read more at the New York Post.