ACLU says T-shirt tied to free speech

Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts yesterday sent a letter to Mayor Thomas M. Menino and Boston Police Commissioner Kathleen M. O'Toole urging them to abandon a plan to send employees into shops to seize or ''strongly discourage" the sale of T-shirts that warn: ''Stop Snitching."

The lawyers said that while they share the concerns about a surge in murders and other violent crimes this year, city officials have no right to bar the sales of such shirts.

That ''is a form of official censorship which is fundamentally inconsistent with the constitutional guarantees of freedom of expression," John Reinstein, legal director for the ACLU of Massachusetts, said in a statement.

Seth Gitell, a spokesman for Menino, said the mayor will not be deterred from stopping the sales of such shirts.

''The mayor's overarching priority is the safety of the people of Boston," Gitell said. ''These T-shirts promote lack of cooperation with law enforcement and, in some cases, the obstruction of justice."

Reinstein noted that some spectators in the December 2004 trial of two men accused of gunning down 10-year-old Trina Persad in Boston in a botched drive-by shooting were seen wearing ''Stop Snitching" T-shirts in the courtroom. Suffolk Superior Court Judge Margaret R. Hinkle barred the spectators because police considered the messages a form of witness intimidation.

''There, it's directly connected with the trial," Reinstein said in an interview. ''But someone outside the courtroom wearing the T-shirt couldn't be told to take it outside."

Some residents living in high-crime neighborhoods reacted angrily to Reinstein's statements.

''Maybe the people saying this don't have to feel threatened on a minute-to-minute basis," said Linda Barros, a resident of the Bowdoin-Geneva Street area in Dorchester, where she said gunfire disturbs her sleep almost nightly and three nonfatal shootings occurred last weekend.

Mary Boze, a 63-year-old resident of Norton Street in Dorchester, agreed.

''I think they should be banned in all communities," Boze said. ''I can't walk up to the corner of my street."

Boze said that the other night she was accosted by a group of teenagers wearing the shirts.

Suzanne Smalley can be reached at ssmalley@globe.com. Jonathan Saltzman can be reached at saltzman@globe.com