Stopping the three card monte and the squeegee men were hallmarks of the Broken Windows policing that worked. Yes the police should stop these little things in urban areas before they become big things.
Exactly, and those three-card monte “games” are nothing more than openly robbing tourists.
The greatness of Broken Windows policing (for NYC) was the realization that the minority population was composed of a modest number of criminals, and a very large number of non-criminals, that the distinction between "big criminals" and "petty criminals" was to some degree arbitrary, and that if you started sweeping up, interrogating, searching, and warrant checking all the squeegee men, dope smokers, three-card monte artists, and taggers that you would find a lot of people who you could send to Attica for 20+, making everybody a lot safer.
Wilson and Giuliani did not understand the familial and tribal relationships among the criminal and non-criminal people, and I don't know that Rudy ever "got" why blacks hated him for making their persons and property so much safer, but it is what it is.