The original content of Democracy Now! Headlines appears under the Creative
Commons BY-NC-ND 3.0 License (United States). For more, including their other
shows and media, visit www.democracynow.org.
September 11, 2015

Tennis Star James Blake: "Police Need to Be Held Accountable" 
--------------------------------------------------------------


 
And African-American tennis star James Blake has spoken out about being
slammed to the ground by five undercover police officers as he stood
outside his Manhattan hotel on Wednesday afternoon. Blake describes
being tackled by a plainclothes police officer whom he initially thought
was an old high school friend he didn't recognize. He says he was cuffed
on the ground for at least 15 minutes until one of the officers
recognized him. The police say they had mistakenly identified Blake as a
suspect in a case of credit card fraud. Following the arrest, one of the
officers appears to have attempted to cover up the incident by failing
to record the stop in the NYPD logs. NYPD Police Commissioner Bill
Bratton said Thursday the arrest "should not have happened."

Commissioner Bill Bratton: "We are very interested in speaking with Mr.
Blake and hope to hear back from him to extend an apology for the
experience he encountered. It should not have happened. ... Concerns I
have about what I witnessed on the video, as well as briefings I've
received by Chief Reznick, the inappropriateness of the amount of force
that was used during the arrest."

At least one officer has been placed on administrative desk duty after
the incident. Speaking on Good Morning America Thursday, Blake said he
believes the police need to be held accountable.

James Blake: "When you police with reckless abandon, you need to be held
accountable. And I think I'm hopefully going to let people know that
some of them need to be held accountable. And these that are doing
police work the wrong way need to pay for those actions and be shown
either the door or whatever they need to do to punish them."

 

.