Khalil Chatman says he sensed that the clerk at the Sunglass Hut at Lloyd Center was watching much too closely as he and a friend looked for a pair of shades.

Chatman is African American. And so is his friend, Naisrael Saelee.

Feeling uncomfortable, the two 18-year-olds left the store. Moments later, the manager of Sunglass Hut made a beeline for them in another store and accused them of stealing, they say.

"He kept saying 'Which one of you took the glasses? You don't have to lie. We have you on camera. Security is on the way,'" recounted Chatman, a star Jefferson High School basketball player who graduated earlier this month and secured a full-ride college scholarship starting next school year.

Khalil Chatman, 18, says he wants to be a role model for African-American children by talking about his experience of allegedly being racially profiled while shopping at Lloyd Center mall.

Turns out the manager was mistaken and eventually realized that he’d moved the glasses within the store earlier in the day, according to the teens' lawyers.

They filed a $500,000 lawsuit last week on behalf of the teens against Sunglass Hut.

A corporate representative didn’t return a request for comment.

The suit is one of four filed this month in Multnomah County Circuit Court by African American customers or their companions claiming big chains racially profiled them as thieves when they did nothing wrong. A Filipino American filed a fifth lawsuit, saying he, too, was confronted because of his race.

In addition to employees at Sunglass Hut, workers at Walmart, Nike, Red Robin and Foot Locker are accused of jumping to the false assumption that the customers stole from their businesses.

“We in Portland want to believe that unlike other big cities we are a colorblind community,” said attorney Jason Kafoury, whose firm is representing all of the plaintiffs in the suits. “The truth is that our minority citizens face routine and widespread discrimination for ‘shopping while black.”

“Day in and day out because of their skin color, they’re treated differently in the city,” Kafoury said.

Portland is about 6 percent black, and less than 2 percent of Oregon’s population is black, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The suits come in the midst of a growing national discussion about alleged racial discrimination by retailers and restaurants, especially in light of an uproar over a video that captured two 23-year-old African American men who were removed from a Philadelphia Starbucks in handcuffs by police after a store employee called because the men hadn’t ordered anything.

Kafoury's firm filed a similar round of six suits in 2015 that settled before reaching court. Kafoury said confidentiality clauses prevented him from publicly disclosing all of the amounts.

Among the recent lawsuits:

Walmart: Jamaal Winchester filed a $55,000 suit Thursday, claiming that a female employee walked up to him as he was leaving with a fishing pole he'd just bought and said, "Are you going to steal that?"

She then asked him to show his receipt, but he refused because of the way the employee questioned him and his belief he'd been singled out because he’s African American, Kafoury said.

Winchester, 38, said he had the day off June 7 from his job at the U.S. Postal Service. He said he was on his way to Bonneville Dam with his three children when he stopped at the Walmart at 4200 S.E. 82nd Ave. and paid for the pole for one of his daughters.

Walmart spokesman Randy Hargrove offered the following comment: “Walmart does not tolerate discrimination of any kind. We take this situation seriously and are conducting a complete review of what occurred. We will take action as appropriate. Since this matter is now in litigation, we won’t provide additional detail.”

Cellphone videos taken by Winchester and his eldest daughter captured the confrontation. In the recording, Winchester notes that the employee called him a “piece of (expletive).” He accuses her of being racist.

Another employee in the video explains why his colleagues stopped Winchester.

“They deal with thieves every day so their natural response -- is a knee-jerk response -- is to defend our store from thieves,” he tells Winchester. “And that’s what they do. So they were wrong. They were very wrong.”

“You can’t call her a racist, though,” the employee continues.

“I can call her a racist if she’s going to profile me,” Winchester responds. “That’s how I feel.”

The second employee also tells Winchester that the store has the right to ask customers for their receipts.

Winchester responds that he didn’t see any posted policy.

Read

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Red Robin: Micah Huff and Dwyane Fleming filed a $500,000 lawsuit against Red Robin last week, claiming they were refused service and wrongly accused of stealing from the Gresham restaurant on Sept. 23.

Red Robin didn’t return a request for comment.

Huff and Fleming’s lawsuit says a waiter at the 789 N.W. Division St. location took the food orders of their female companions, who are Latina, then abruptly left the table without taking their orders. The waiter returned, demanded that they pre-pay, took their money and then returned and told the men they had to leave, according to the suit.

The suit says the waiter told Huff and Fleming that they had been caught on video three weeks earlier dining-and-dashing while wearing the same clothes. The lawsuit states that Huff and Fleming hadn’t been in the restaurant for about a year and were wearing clothes they had just bought.

The men said the manager ultimately admitted “that’s not right” and offered them drink vouchers to try to smooth things over, but Fleming and Huff said that wasn't enough to remedy what they see as racial profiling.

“At first, it’s an embarrassing feeling, then ... it’s a very angry feeling,” said Huff, 21.

Fleming, 18, said the restaurant’s workers “were all just looking and talking and pointing at us.”

Both men have lived in the metro area their entire lives: Huff grew up in Portland, Gresham and Vancouver. Fleming grew up in Gresham. They said they’ve felt racially profiled at stores in the past but haven’t made a point of trying to hold the businesses accountable.

“It’s kind of something that we’re used to, and we just keep our composure everywhere just to make sure nothing happens,” Huff said.

Huff is a writer, artist and day-care teacher. Fleming is a music producer and touring DJ.

Read the lawsuit here.

Sunglass Hut: Chatman and Saelee, the friends who say they were falsely accused of stealing from the Sunglass Hut, felt humiliated after the manager walked them across Lloyd Center and back to the store on Feb. 26.

Chatman said once at the business, the manager realized it was a mistake -- that an employee thought the glasses were missing, but the manager had moved them to a different spot in the store hours earlier.

“He apologized and then said, ‘We’re not racist,’” Chatman said.

But Chatman said he thinks race was at play because of the time that had passed since the manager moved the glasses and the number of other customers who must have visited the store and presumably weren’t accused of stealing.

Chatman and Saelee said the employees made a flash judgment about them because of their race.

“It obviously didn’t occur to them, ‘They could be good students, good community members,’” Chatman said. “It was just the color of my skin and my friend’s skin that alerted them, that put them on the watch.”

At the time, Saelee was the cheer captain at Jefferson High. She said she’s headed to the University of Oregon on a full-tuition scholarship. Chatman was weeks away from scoring 30 points at the 6A state championships that spring. He started college this month at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, Calif., on his full-ride scholarship.

Read the lawsuit here.

Foot Locker: Valerie Stegman filed a $150,000 lawsuit against Foot Locker on Thursday, claiming the Clackamas Town Center store accused her of stealing some shirts while shopping with her life partner. Stegman is white. Her partner is African American.

Foot Locker didn’t return a request for comment.

Stegman’s suit claims the store refused to let her return a jacket that she carried in a Foot Locker sack. After she walked over to her partner to discuss what happened, an employee grabbed the sack and started searching through it, according to the suit.

The employee also grabbed Stegman’s arm and said: “Give me my shirts back. Give me back the shirts you put in the bag,” the suit alleges.

When the employee found nothing stolen, he let Stegman go, the suit says.

Stegman, 28, is a cosmetologist.

Read the lawsuit here.

Nike: Fernando Stenseth filed a $250,000 lawsuit against Nike this month, claiming he was stopped by police who were summoned by a store employee after shopping at the downtown Portland store on Southwest Fifth Avenue.

Stenseth, a U.S. Postal Service employee, had returned a pair of Air Jordan shoes on June 30 without incident and left the store, Kafoury said. Stenseth, 55, had made it two blocks to Pioneer Square when police approached him based on the employee’s report that he’d stolen the Nike sports bag he’d carried with him into the store, Kafoury said.

Police made him sit on the sidewalk, according to Stenseth's attorneys.

Stenseth then was ordered back to the store, but ultimately was let go after he found the old receipt for the sports bag on his phone, Kafoury said.

“He’s been having nightmares, really extreme anxiety about going into stores,” Kafoury said.

Read the lawsuit here.

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-- Aimee Green