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So the cops are basically committing a felony (violation of 4th Amendment) so they can bust some low level pot offenders.

No. It's like nailing "fare-beaters" who jump over the turnstiles instead of paying the subway fare. When they turned their attention to busting them, they found that a huge percentage were already wanted for assault, robbery, rape, and so on. Same with weed on the street, in about 90 percent of the cases. That's what the cops are looking for.

The change in safety for normal grown-ups—those not flying on drugs as they walk down the street—after Giuliani started these "public order" enforcement policies changed the city overnight. People started going out at night again, business boomed, hiring soared, etc.

Most small-use marijuana stops are winos and thugs, rather than white-knuckled, principled, Ron Paul-ites who talk about Ayn Rand, who are scarce in NYC. The real reason for this "relaxation" in enforcement is because it means fewer black arrests. That's good for those NYS Assemblymen who represent the relatives of felons from Brooklyn and upper Manhattan.

Giuliani understood law enforcement. Bloomberg understands . . . I'm not sure, maybe homosexuality?

Same with weed on the street, in about 90 percent of the cases

Cite?

The percentage of people busted on the frisk and search low level marijuana arrests who had active warrants out was under 16%. (From a recent NYPost article on the subject) And less than half of those get prosecuted for the other charges.

If 90% of the people arrested in NYC for stop and frisk low level marijuana charges had warrants, every bed in every prison in NY State would be filled to 200%+ capacity just on stop and frisk prosecutions.

So thanks for the hyperbole.

Here are the hard statistics on stop and frisk in the city:
http://www.nyclu.org/issues/racial-justice/stop-and-frisk-practices

In 2011, 685,724 New Yorkers were stopped by the police.
605,328 were totally innocent (88 percent).
350,743 were black (53 percent).
223,740 were Latino (34 percent).
61,805 were white (9 percent).
341,581 were aged 14-24 (51 percent).

An entire generation of youths in NYC now genuinely and passionately HATE the NYPD to the core of their beings due to the decade long constant harassment by stop and frisks. Every young minority guy in the city knows multiple people who have been harassed and humiliated publicly by the NYPD during these stop and frisks.

Another article with some relevant comments:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204795304577221770752633612.html

The change in safety for normal grown-ups—those not flying on drugs as they walk down the street—after Giuliani started these "public order" enforcement policies changed the city overnight. People started going out at night again, business boomed, hiring soared, etc.

While I admit I do not understand New York or its crime, I would never live somewhere where the police can approach any citizen without any cause and frisk them because they have some hunch about them. If they are committing a crime, fine, but if they are just walking down the street, the police should not be able to stop and search them without cause.

The ends do not justify the means here.