Can a police officer justify a stop on the ground that the area is a high crime area?

Just as a man with a hammer sees every problem as a nail, so a man with a badge may see every corner of his beat as a high crime area. See, e.g., Price v. Kramer, 200 F.3d 1237, 1247 (9th Cir. 2000) (police officers sought to justify stop on the ground that Crenshaw Boulevard in Torrance was a "high crime area known for `gang activity' "). Police are trained to detect criminal activity and they look at the world with suspicious eyes. This is a good thing, because we rely on this suspicion to keep us safe from those who would harm us. But to rely on every cop's repertoire of war stories to determine what is a "high crime area"--and on that basis to treat otherwise innocuous behavior as grounds for reasonable suspicion-strikes me as an invitation to trouble. If the testimony of two officers that they made, at most, 32 arrests during the course of a decade is sufficient to turn the road here into a high crime area, then what area under police surveillance wouldn't qualify as one? There are street corners in our inner cities that see as much crime within a month--even a week. I would be most reluctant to give police the power to turn any area into a high crime area based on their unadorned personal experiences. I certainly would not reach out to decide the issue.