Former tennis player James Blake criticizes NYC mayor for handling of false arrest in 2015
By
Isaac Finn
7 August 2018
Retired professional tennis player James Blake issued a statement last Wednesday denouncing New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio for failing to inform him about a second New York Police Department (NYPD) disciplinary trial of a police officer over his false arrest in 2015.
The incident, which the NYPD had labeled a case of mistaken identity, involved a plainclothes cop, James Frascatore, brutally tackling and handcuffing Blake as he waited for a taxi outside the Grand Hyatt hotel in Manhattan. Frascatore and other officers did not identify themselves or the reason for the arrest for over 10 minutes as Blake lay prone on the sidewalk.
Frascatore failed to report the incident and it was only after Blake contacted the NYPD that it came to the department’s attention. A CCTV video that showed the incident was then recovered.
Frascatore was initially given a slap-on-the-wrist punishment of the loss of five vacation days for tackling Blake, but now faces another disciplinary trial this week for allegedly meddling with the investigation.
Blake expressed his outrage with the self-proclaimed progressive Democratic mayor and the NYPD, stating, “It’s disappointing that the de Blasio administration and NYPD failed to notify me that James Frascatore was in a departmental trial yesterday related to the incident involving me in 2015. But the lack of real punishment for Frascatore is the bigger travesty.”
He further pointed out the hypocrisy over not notifying him of the trial given the city’s “claims to be improving the transparency of how its police department operates,” and called on the de Blasio administration to release the findings of the trial to the…