The Handschu guidelines came out of landmark lawsuit the lawyers filed and a subsequent 1985 court settlement that set strict time limits for investigations, imposed rules on the kinds of records police could keep and created a three-person body to oversee such investigations.

WSJ: Civil rights lawyers: NYPD spying violates rules

That regulation, called Reg SHO, went into effect in January 2005 and was supposed to impose strict close-out requirements on stocks that showed consistent and frequent settlement failures over a specific period of time.

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