Times Square shooting is what happens when you don’t police the little stuff

U.S. Marine Samuel Poulin wasn’t on active deployment when he was shot Sunday afternoon outside of a Times Square Starbucks, but you’d be forgiven for mistaking the Crossroads of the World for a war zone. The broad daylight gunplay was the second such incident in two months, and now counts a total of four casualties, including a child.

The earlier violence — and perhaps this incident as well — was driven by aggressive street hustlers “selling” their CDs. Anyone who has walked through the area for five minutes has been approached by a wannabe rap star asking if you “like rap music.” Natives know not to give these guys so much as an eyeball, but tourists — who are starting to trickle back to the city — may, out of interest or just to be polite, stop and engage with the phony pitch. Then the strongarm appeal begins, with CDs thrust into hands followed by demands for money. Sometimes bills are timidly proffered; sometimes they are snatched out of wallets. In few cases is the exchange anything the Better Business Bureau would stamp as kosher. If you’re lucky, the disc will be blank; sometimes it’s malware, in which case you have fallen into a scammer’s parlay.