If you’ve suffered the TSA’s gate-rape at the airport, you have an inkling of life as a black or Latino man in dystopian New York City: at any time, while minding your own business and peaceably pursuing your affairs, cops may "stop and frisk" you just to see what turns up.

Jaenean Ligon’s 17-year-old son was one such collar. She sent him to buy ketchup for the family’s dinner one evening – only to have cops phone her to come "identify" him. She understandably panicked, assuming someone had injured or killed her boy. Instead, cops had "stopped and frisked" this innocuous teen running an innocent errand. They had no warrant, suspicion that he had committed a crime, or anything other than a general belief that guys his age and color are all criminals. New Yorkers have endured such humiliation something like 5 million times over the last decade.

The NYPD’s top cop, Ray Kelly, has long defended this insult. He whitewashes it as a "service" his uniformed thugs "provide" poor people. He dismisses critics as rich, out-of-touch misers, endeavoring to deprive the impecunious of protection they themselves enjoy: they "probably … live in buildings with doormen, and they have a level of safety that people who live in tenements … don’t have."

I’ve often visited friends in buildings with doormen. Never once have any of these guards, who range from courteous to bored but who are harmless either way, demanded my ID. Nor has even one proposed that he fondle me before alerting my host of my arrival. They would not only be fired but arrested and prosecuted for "providing" such a "service."