Metro

Stop-&-frisk touted at hearing

The commander of a crime-ridden Brooklyn precinct defended the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk tactics yesterday against claims that innocent minorities are illegally targeted by a program that lets cops patrol private apartment buildings.

Deputy Inspector Kenneth Lehr told a judge that Operation Clean Halls has been received “favorably” by the community in the 67th Precinct, which covers East Flatbush and ranks third for “total incidents” in the city.

“Everybody likes to see a uniformed cop, and I think there’s a good reason for that,” Lehr testified in Manhattan federal court.

Lehr said the Clean Halls program is aimed at getting rid of groups of people who loiter near building entrances and in vestibules, openly smoking pot and dealing drugs.

“It’s intimidating to the people who live there,” he said. “They’re afraid of what’s going on in their building.”

As of September, Lehr said, landlords had enrolled more than 240 buildings in his precinct into the Clean Halls program.

During an October review of 26 buildings, 15 were kept in the program, while 11 others were removed because conditions there had improved, he added.

Lehr has appeared as a witness for the city during an ongoing hearing before Judge Shira Scheindlin, who has been asked by the New York Civil Liberties Union to bar cops from stopping people on suspicion of trespassing outside Clean Halls buildings.

Also testifying yesterday was NYPD Deputy Chief James Shea, who until recently ran the city’s Police Academy, during which time he created a “refresher course” on conducting proper stop-and-frisks.

Shea said cops are explicitly taught that they can’t engage in racial profiling when making stops.

He also said cops are required, whenever possible, to explain why someone was stopped if the encounter doesn’t end in an arrest.

Meanwhile, the NYPD yesterday announced the arrest of a 19-year-old man charged with carrying a loaded .380-caliber pistol after a stop-and-frisk involving a Clean Halls building in The Bronx.

Morgan Duvall was busted after he and several other males dispersed when cops on a robbery patrol approached the Morrisania II Apartments early Sunday morning.

Duvall has prior trespass arrests in 2011 in both public housing and buildings enrolled in the Clean Halls program, police said.