Judge limits NYPD 'Clean Halls' powers

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NEW YORK, Jan. 8 (UPI) -- A judge ordered the New York Police Department to cease stopping people outside apartments in an anti-crime program without reasonable suspicion.

The 157-page decision offered Tuesday by federal judge Shira Scheindlin said she was "not ordering the abolition or even a reduction" of the city's "Clean Halls" program, but her ruling "is directed squarely at a category of stops lacking reasonable suspicion."

In the voluntary program in The Bronx, landlords permit police patrols inside privately owned apartment buildings to crack down on crime, the New York Post said Tuesday.

"In order for an officer to have reasonable suspicion that an individual is engaged in criminal trespass, the officer must be able to articulate facts providing a minimal level of justification .... something more than an inchoate and unparticularized suspicion or hunch," Scheindlin wrote.