[UPDATE BELOW] Presumably sick of all the bleeding heart liberals whining about civil rights, NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly has devised an elegant solution to sidestep the controversy over his department's stop and frisk policy. Speaking at a State of the NYPD breakfast this morning, Kelly announced that the NYPD is developing a kind of infrared technology that will enable police officers to detect whether individuals are carrying guns under their clothing. Sure, it's not as badass as shooting down a plane, but at least cops will finally be able to see what's under our clothes without having to get out of their cars.

The mechanism, which the NYPD is developing with help from the U.S. Department of Defense, currently only works at a short range of three or four feet. But Kelly thinks they can improve it to scan citizens from a distance of up to 25 meters away. He announced this morning that the gadget will be mounted on NYPD vans with "the infrared rays shooting up the street at the person," as the Post puts it.

The device detects the radiation emitting from a person’s body, and it can't penetrate metal, so a concealed gun can be spotted from the image captured by the detector's lens. It's unclear how much the new technology will cost the city, but hopefully it's less than that $10 million Kelly blew on a big shipment of X-Ray glasses he ordered from the back of Boy's Life.

UPDATE: Sought for comment about the virtual pat-down of the Future, NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman issued this statement: