Bullets over Broadway

One of the great Rambler quotes of all time came when the city finally decided to make over Times Sq. He was opposed to it. Why? "Scum have to go somewhere."
Scum made an unwelcome return to the Square on Thursday, when a CD Peddler (read: hustler), was stopped by the NYPD for having no license to sell on the street. The peddler, a 25-year-old dirtbag, was duly seen in a photo with Al Sharpton (a bigger hustler cannot be humanly found)in the NY Post.
To sum up the story, the peddler ran through one of the walkways that take you from the Broadway streetside to a kind of cabbie-arcade entrance midblock at the Marriott Marquis hotel.
A plainclothes cop told the peddler to stop. Instead, the guy whips out a submachine gun that later turned out to have a magazine with 17 bullets in it. The guy gets off two shots, then the gun jammed. The cop then shot the man four times in the middle of Times Square tourists (at about noon) and killed him.
Should this story be read as an example of police over-reaction, it is anything but that. The CD peddlers in Times Square are shakedown artists, pure and simple. They play on the fears of tourists, whom New York needs more than ever right now.
Here's the two big hustles. 1) A guy comes up to you and says he's an up and coming rap artist, signs his name on a worthless CD, then he and his homies surround you. Close, real close, in those menacing extra-large puffy black Michelin tire man jackets. Then they demand $10 for the CD.
2) The friendly approach. The CD has all kinds of fake album-cover art and seems professional. A man says that this is your opportunity to catch a rising talent before anyone else. All this can be yours for the low, low price of $10. Catch him before Wal-Mart does.
The man, 25, was definitely in the first camp. His idiotic raps about killing cops were all over the tabloids yesterday. Hey, Rolling Stone (and Nate Brackett, one of my college editors), here's a moron you can hype as "real" and "from the street!"
The truth is that Times Square is always going to be under siege from the various discontented segments of NY society. Gangs used to go there for initiation wherin you as a prospective member go to mug someone and thus be brought into the gang.
The cops were everywhere in the Square last night, mostly to direct traffic, but also to keep order. Whatever you think of the sanitized new Times Square, the city knows a gold mine (in the form of tourists) when it sees it.
A little irony in this case. When the Marriott decided to put up the Marquis, the Square was still more than a little sketchy. It thus put up a kind of berm on the Broadway side of the building, with the entrance to the hotel mid-block or so. This was to protect tourists from marauding no-goodniks populating the street. You simply caught a cab inside the arcade and went.
These arcades or breezeways or whatever were exactly where the violence went down. Next time try razor wire.