NEW YORK -- The Brooklyn hospital manager who accused police of targeting him for subway bag searches because he looks Middle Eastern has settled his federal case for $25,000.

Jangir Sultan, of Brooklyn, who is of South Asian descent, said that he had been stopped by the New York Police Department 21 times between April 2005 and April 2009, when he filed the suit in Brooklyn, and that the odds of that happening are 1 in 165 million. He said at the time he wanted no money - just a change in how NYPD carries out its controversial bag inspection program.

But Sultan, 33, accepted the city's "unsolicited" settlement offer because, if he had gone to trial, he ran the risk of paying the city's legal bills if he lost or, if he won, could have received less than the offer, said his lawyer, Christopher Dunn, associate legal director for the New York Civil Liberties Union.

Dunn said Sultan's suit - and the eight complaints he filed with the Civilian Complaint Review Board - made police aware of who he is and "put the brakes on his bag being searched."

He added, "We think there are many other people out there who are being improperly targeted for stops" due to ethnicity or race.

The review board couldn't determine if misconduct occurred in the searches cited by Sultan.

Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne, the NYPD's top spokesman, called the $25,000 a "nuisance settlement" and said Sultan was targeted because he was carrying a bag large enough to hold explosives and because his number came up as the 10th or 20th person being searched on any given day.

Police started subway bag searches in July 2005 in response to the deadly transit bombings in London.