BOSTON (AP) – The owner of a store that stocks “Stop Snitching” T-shirts has agreed to halt selling them after meeting with Mayor Thomas Menino on Saturday.

Antonio Ennis, owner of Antonio Ansaldi Clothing in the city’s Dorchester section, agreed to stop selling the shirts in his store and over the Internet after meeting with Menino and outraged community religious leaders.

“It’s the right thing to do,” he said.

The store has stocked the shirts since 1999 and sells 300 to 400 a month, he said.

Menino said the message on the T-shirts is designed to intimidate crime witnesses from cooperating with police.

Menino said this week that he would have city employees seize the shirts or “strongly discourage” their sales. His announcement came after meeting Thursday with Police Commissioner Kathleen O’Toole and Suffolk District Attorney Daniel Conley to discuss a recent rise in violent crimes and murders.

The city has 66 homicides so far this year, matching a 10-year high, and police haven’t identified a suspect in 70 percent of them. They say many witnesses are reluctant to help because of a fear of retaliation, and Menino says the “Stop Snitching” shirts are part of the problem.

At a meeting Thursday, the mayor said he would send city employees into shops to seize the shirts.

Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts sent a letter to Menino and O’Toole on Friday and asked them to abandon the plan.

They said they share the concerns about a surge in murders and other violent crimes this year, but that city officials have no right to bar the sales of the T-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.

Some residents of high-crime neighborhoods reacted angrily to Reinstein’s statements. Linda Barros, a Dorchester resident, said gunfire disturbs her sleep almost nightly.

AP-ES-12-03-05 2315EST