AG’S frisky business

State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has embarked on an expedition to review the Police Department’s program of stopping, questioning and sometimes frisking people who seem criminally inclined. Politics trumps the public good. To use law enforcement parlance, does Schneiderman have reasonable suspicion that the NYPD is wholesale violating New Yorkers’ rights? He does not. Or a reasonable suspicion that the stops are racially or ethnically motivated? He does not.

Or a reasonable suspicion that the stops have not helped to drive down crime, particularly in poorer neighborhoods? No he doesn’t.

What he has is a campaign promise to fulfill for liberal Democrats who were key to his election in 2010 and who appear to view policing that goes beyond “pretty please” as abusive.

What he also has are numbers, statistics that count stops and, in a small percentage of those cases when cops are fearful, frisks.

The numbers have been hashed over to death. They are not going to change no matter how many times they are counted. That is all Schneiderman is signaling he plans to do: Count again.

But, hey, you never know. Like the old saw that says a conservative is a liberal who got mugged, maybe being in law enforcement has sharpened Schneiderman’s perspective. He did recently refuse to review the NYPD’S intelligence-gathering in Muslim communities. Maybe he’ll give Commissioner Ray Kelly a great big attaboy.

If not, he should answer the question Kelly posed recently to the City Council: Does he have a better idea for fighting crime?