Malcolm Gladwell has a great book titled "talking to strangers" which addresses these types of aggressive police tactics. The book is highly recommended, but one of its points is that this sort of policing was very effective when first used. (more specifically, the research he was looking at was doing searches at traffic stops, but perhaps similar enough to what you're suggesting). Though, that initial attempt was in high crime areas. Unfortunately, police started doing this sort of thing in all areas, which doesn't catch a lot of criminals and instead generates a lot of ill will (and safety problems). And, by "high crime areas", most violent crime is in a very small area of a city.

So yes, likely effective, provided it's done correctly, but I'm not sure we have a way to ensure it's done correctly.