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I felt humiliated. You know, there's a certain anxiety level every time I walk through a subway station or walk through a security checkpoint,” says Yogi Patell, a CUNY Law student.

I will not say "if you have nothing to hide, why do you have a problem having your bag searched?" I think that is a weak argument, because I don't like having my bag searched, ever, simply because it is an invasion of my privacy.

But "a certain anxiety level"? Why anxiety? Does he really think the police officers are going to harrass or harm him if his bag does not contain anything dangerous?

I have been to some Third-World hellholes in my time, and a certain level of anxiety is completely understandable in those cases, because the young illiterate kid sticking an AK-47 in your ear is not, shall we say, well trained, and the chain of command can be somewhat casual. But these conditions do not exist in New York City.

So you have this man, by his own account, meeting people in the train station and carrying bags onto subway trains while experiencing "a certain anxiety level" every time he walks through a subway station or walks through a security checkpoint. Completely absent any racial aspect, this is just the sort of activity the police are looking out for. You want them to be stopping nervous men carrying bags who are meeting people in the stations and boarding multiple trains, regardless of race.

But Patell questions whether searches are the best use of police resources, and said that even if they are random, “There's a certain amount of stigma with these searches.”

This statement makes no sense, whatsoever. If the searches are random, why is there "a certain amount of stigma"? If the searches are random, they are completely neutral with regards to "stigma".

In any case, even assuming things are completely random, if the police are searching 50,000 out of 2,000,000 passengers a day, it is statistically inevitable that at least a few passengers will be searched three or four times in a day.

You want them to be stopping nervous men carrying bags who are meeting people in the stations and boarding multiple trains, regardless of race.

Heck yes, the nervous guy with the bag should be the one pulled aside. If he doesn't like it, lump it.

If the searches are random, why is there "a certain amount of stigma"?

I am occasionally taken aside by TSA for more invasive searches. I figure that event stigmatizes THEM, not me. Especially when, after they announce their thorough search is complete, I point out zippered sections of my carry-on that they have overlooked.