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Former U.S. No. 1 Jame Blake said a “race factor” could have played a role in the case of mistaken identity in which he was forced to the ground.
Retired top-10 professional tennis player James Blake has criticized the “unnecessary police force” of plainclothes officers after he was slammed to the ground outside his New York hotel and handcuffed when the agents wrongly believed him to be a suspect in a fraud sting.
New York Police Department Commissioner William J. Bratton announced that the force is investigating the “very disturbing” incident on Wednesday, which the Black former U.S. No. 1 believed could have involved a “race factor.”
“He has a right to be upset about it,” Bratton said.
Police have seen footage of the officer pushing Blake, who is just over six feet tall, to the ground outside the Grand Hyatt hotel on East 42nd Street, Manhattan, and handcuffing the former athlete with the help of several other officers.
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Blake told The Daily News that he was held like that for 15 minutes after telling the officers who he was, while they confirmed his identity. The incident left him with cuts and bruises, and the officer who wrestled him to the floor did not apologize.
“To me it’s as simple as unnecessary police force, no matter what my race is,” Blake told The Daily News. “In my mind there’s probably a race factor involved, but no matter what, there’s no reason for anybody to do that to anybody.”
“I was just standing there. I wasn’t running,” he said. Referring to the use of force, he added: “It’s blatantly unnecessary. You would think at some point they would get the memo that this isn’t O.K., but it seems that there’s no stopping it.”
Bratton responded saying that the incident would not be tolerated.
“We will very aggressively address it. I will not tolerate any type of excessive use of force on the part of my police. But as always, and we have that saying, ‘The first story is never the last story,’ so we’ll wait and see what we get for facts and circumstances and, hopefully, video,” he said.
According to the police department, officers were working on operation to expose a credit card fraud ring.
J. Peter Donald, a Police Department spokesman, said that the issue of whether Blake had been thrown to the ground by officers is “under investigation.”
Blake’s carreer included reaching No. 4 seed in the world and winning 10 singles titles.
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