NYPD has released a video showing an officer in plain clothes throwing tennis star James Blake to the ground and cuffing him.
- Sep 13, 2015
AceShowbiz - Police releases a video that showed the moment when tennis star, James Blake (II), was mistaken as a suspect in an identity theft crime. He was seen being thrown to the ground and handcuffed by an undercover officer in plain clothes while he was standing on the sidewalk in Manhattan.
The incident happened outside the Grand Hyatt hotel in New York City. Blake said he was waiting for his ride that would take him to the U.S. Open when the cop tackled him. "You'd think they could say, 'Hey, we want to talk to you. We are looking into something,' " he told New York Daily News. "I was just standing there. I wasn't running."
Blake was reportedly detained for 15 minutes as additional cops surrounded him. He reportedly suffered a cut to his elbow and bruised to his leg. "It was definitely scary and definitely crazy," he said. "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 have resources to get to the bottom of this. I have a voice," he said. "But what about someone who doesn't have those resources and doesn't have a voice? The real problem is that I was tackled for no reason and that happens to a lot of people who don't have a media outlet to voice that to."
New York Police Commissioner William Bratton responded, "It's very disturbing, the idea that he claims he was rushed by a person in a pair of t-shirt and shorts who pushed him to the ground and he was assisted by four others who identified themselves, ultimately, as police officers, and that he suffered an injury during that."
He added, "Just the nature of what he described is not what we do. I will not tolerate any type of excessive use of force on the part of my police, but as always, we have that saying, the first story is never the last story."
