Police Shoot and Kill Man Outside Hotel in Times Square

Celia Naar
Post #1

Police Shoot and Kill Man Outside Hotel in Times Square

A plain clothes police officer attatched to a unit which regulates street vending shot and kill a man associated with what is known as a ‘CD scam’. According to this article, the police officer approached two men who were ‘intimidating tourists’ by asking their names, writing them on a CD, and then demanding the tourist buy it for $10. The officer asked to see their tax stamp which would establish that they were legal vendors. At this request one of the men took off on foot, the police officer pursued. When the officer caught up to the man there was an exchange of gunfire in which the vendor was killed. The vendor was found to have a mac 10 machine pistol in his position at the time of the shooting.

While it appears that the officer fired in self defense, what is interesting about this story is the number of times tourists were referenced. Police have been cracking down on this kind of street vending during the holidays in an effort to keep up the cities image with out-of-towners. The police crackdown has the explicit goal of keeping the peace so that people will feel secure going to shop for the holidays, security that, in this economy, seems hard to come by even in the absence of those pesky CD scammers.


http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/10/police-shoot-man-at-hotel-in-times-square/?hp