Former tennis star James Blake has called for the firing of the NYPD police officer who slammed him to the sidewalk in an arrest that turned out to be a case of mistaken identity.
Still clearly shaken by the event, which was caught on video, Blake said on Saturday that he felt “raw” and kept replaying the violent incident in his head.
Police officer James Frascatore has been stripped of his badge and gun. He has been on desk duty since the Wednesday incident where he pounced upon an unsuspecting Blake outside the Grand Hyatt Hotel in midtown Manhattan and knocked him to the ground.
“I don’t think he deserves ever to have that badge again. He should lose his job, this is not the right job for him,” Blake told CNN on Saturday afternoon.
However Blake, 35, a former US No 1 and world No 4 tennis player, who is African American, declared that he did not want to label the aggressive arrest a racial issue “at this stage”, only an issue of excessive force.
Blake’s mother told the Daily News she is convinced there probably was a racial element to Frascatore’s actions, while NYPD police commissioner Bill Bratton has insisted race was not a factor in Blake’s arrest.
“I think the race issue is a bigger issue for another day and this is about excessive force,” he said.
However, he noted that he had not in any way resisted the arrest because he was aware of the consequence that any “miscommunication can bring”, especially with the issue brought to the fore in the last year or more of heightened attention on multiple police killings of unarmed black men.
“I made sure that I was 100% cooperative. You can see from the video that I’m not resisting and I’m doing everything I’m told to. If I had put up any sort of resistance, I wonder what could have happened,” he said.
Asked if that included the notion that he may not even “be here” now if he had fought back, Blake said: “Yes.”
“It still strikes a nerve, and it’s still frustrating and angering. To be a police officer you are given a lot of rights and a lot of powers and to abuse those is just wrong,” he said.
Blake is considering a lawsuit but said he was more concerned first with talking to the police commissioner and New York City mayor Bill de Blasio – who called Blake to apologize after the incident – about how to reform a culture that produces abusive police officers.
“I have the utmost respect for the NYPD and most of them are heroes. The majority are great public servants but there is a lot of attention on a dangerous minority using their badge and shield to do bad things,” he said.
Blake was waiting outside the hotel for a car to pick him up and take him to a US Open tennis event when a plainclothes Frascatore strode toward him and swiftly manhandled him to the ground, with an arm around his neck and then a knee in his back as he handcuffed him.
Blake was then led off down the crowded Manhattan street and detained for about 15 minutes before Frascatore and the other officers admitted they had the wrong man, in a sting operation where they had been attempting to arrest someone resembling Blake for credit card fraud.
It has since emerged that Frascatore has amassed a number of complaints against him for alleged excessive force, with reports that he has punched black men in unprovoked attacks while stopping them for questioning, according to the New York Times on Saturday.
Blake said that even if he had been a genuine suspect in the case, he should not have been taken to the ground in the way he was.
“It was completely unnecessary,” he said. He also claims that at no time did Frascatore or any of the other officers identify themselves as the police.
