BOSTON (AP) – Mayor Thomas Menino will move ahead with a plan to seize the controversial “Stop Snitching” T-shirts from city stores, despite complaints from the American Civil Liberties Union that the plan violates the Constitution’s free speech protections.

Menino’s spokesman, Seth Gitell, said Menino will try to stop the T-shirt sales because his top priority is the safety of Boston residents.

“These T-shirts promote lack of cooperation with law enforcement and, in some cases, the obstruction of justice,” he said.

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 County District Attorney Daniel Conley to discuss a recent rise in violent crimes and murders.

Police haven’t identified a suspect in 70 percent of homicide cases this. 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. The city has 66 homicides so far this year, matching a 10 year high.

M. Antonio Ennis, owner of Antonio Ansaldi Clothing in Boston, which sells the T-shirts, said if anyone confiscates them, “that’s robbery.”

“If the mayor really wants to stop the violence, then he ought to go into Smith ‘ Wesson and pull the guns off the shelves, because my shirts aren’t the ones killing people,” Ennis told the Boston Herald.

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.

“Maybe the people saying this don’t have to feel threatened on a minute-to-minute basis,” she told The Boston Globe.

-Associated Press