Macy's has agreed to pay New York State $600,000 to settle a complaint that its New York department stores engaged in racial profiling and the unlawful handcuffing of customers detained on suspicion of shoplifting, officials said yesterday. Under the settlement, which follows an investigation by Eliot Spitzer, the state attorney general, Macy's East, the owner of 29 Macy's department stores in New York, will also change its security practices, said officials of Federated Department Stores, the parent company of Macy's... Macy's, like many other retailers, employs a private policing system whereby people suspected of shoplifting are often detained, questioned and sometimes privately fined. Mr. Spitzer's investigation found that most of people detained at a sampling of Macy's stores around the state were black and Latino, a disproportionately high number when compared with the percentage of blacks and Latinos who shopped at those stores, according to the complaint... Macy's officials said the company's formal policy banning racial and ethnic profiling was ignored by employees of the stores investigated by Mr. Spitzer. ''The agreement is a result of both parties' working toward a common goal of ensuring that the policies we had in place are followed strictly by employees in the stores,'' said Carol Sanger, vice president for corporate affairs at Cincinnati-based Federated Department Stores.