Former American tennis star James Blake was tackled by police outside a New York City hotel on Wednesday in a case of mistaken identity.
As
The New York Daily News reports, Blake was standing outside waiting for a car to Queens for the U.S. Open, when he saw a man approaching him. Via the
Daily News:
“Maybe I’m naïve, but I just assumed it was someone I went to high school with or something who was running at me to give me a big hug, so I smiled at the guy,” Blake said. Blake said the officer, who he said was not wearing a badge, picked him up and threw him down on the sidewalk, yelled at him to roll over on his face and said, “Don’t say a word.
Blake was then cuffed and detained. Eventually, five members of the police, all white, showed at the scene. The final arrival realized Blake was not the suspect in a “identity theft ring operating around the midtown hotel.” After 15 minutes, the handcuffs were removed.
When asked if Blake thought his incident was race-based, the Harvard-educated tennis player, and a favorite of tennis fans and writers alike, gave a thoughtful answer:
“I don’t know if it’s as simple as that. To me it’s as simple as unnecessary police force, no matter what my race is. 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.
“You’d think they could say, ‘Hey, we want to talk to you. We are looking into something. I was just standing there. I wasn’t running. It’s not even close (to be okay). It’s blatantly unnecessary. You would think at some point they would get the memo that this isn’t okay, but it seems that there’s no stopping it.”
Blake, who once reached No. 4 in the ATP rankings, said he’d like an apology from the NYPD. He told the
Daily News he didn’t want to his encounter public, but he felt he owed it to people who suffer such actions and don’t have a voice.
