New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton said Thursday
he wants to apologize to former tennis star James Blake, who was mistakenly
tackled and handcuffed by
police in a sting operation that went awry outside a Manhattan hotel Wednesday.
Bratton insisted race was not a factor in the incident.
"It should
not have happened," Bratton said at a news conference, adding that Mayor
Bill de Blasio also wants to apologize to Blake, whom they haven't been able to
contact yet.
"I don't
believe that race was a factor," Bratton said. "This rush to put a
race tag on it, I'm sorry, that's not involved in this at all."
Blake is
biracial. Several officers made the arrest outside the Grand Hyatt Hotel and
one of them, a white undercover officer, has been placed on desk duty.
Blake, once
ranked No. 4 in the world, told the New York Daily News that "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. It's not even close (to being OK). It's blatantly unnecessary."
Blake told the
Daily News as many as five plainclothes police officers tackled him. He was
waiting for a car to pick him up and take him to the U.S. Open tennis
tournament, where he's doing corporate appearances, the paper said.
Blake, 35, spent
five or 10 minutes with his hands cuffed behind his back before police realized
they had the wrong guy and let him go, Bratton said.
Detectives from
the Identity Theft Task Force had gone to the hotel at midday Wednesday to
arrest people purchasing high-end shoes with fraudulent credit cards, NYPD
Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce said.
Officers set up
the sting after a company that delivered goods on demand notified police that a
group of people had purchased $18,000 in items using fraudulent credit cards,
Boyce said.
Two Britons arrested at hotel
At the hotel, a courier delivered the
goods to one man and police arrested him, Boyce said, identifying the suspect
as a white male from England visiting the United States on a student visa.
"That courier
then told the owner of the service provider that the individual standing 8 feet
away, Mr. James Blake, was the other perpetrator" in the earlier incident,
Boyce said.
Officers also
identified Blake as a suspect from a photo given to police by the company
supplying the goods, Boyce said.
The company got
the photo off Instagram based on the name of a person they'd done business
with, Boyce said.
"If you
look at the photo ... it's a reasonable likeness to Mr. Blake," Boyce
said. "They look like twins."
But the
Instagram photo can't be shown to the press, he said, because it turned out to
be the image of an innocent person, not anybody involved in the fraud case.
Blake was let go
shortly after a retired New York police officer informed detectives that he was
a tennis player.
Police went
inside the hotel and arrested a second suspect, also a Briton, Boyce said.
Those two
Britons were charged with identity theft and credit card fraud.
Bratton has
ordered an internal investigation. He wants to know how the mistake was made,
if excessive force was used and why detention protocols were not followed.
Did police use too much force?
"Was the force used inappropriate?
The initial review is we believe it may not have been," he said.
Bratton said
he's heard reports one of the officers did not display a badge. That may have
been because he was undercover, Bratton said.
Blake, 35, a
former Olympian, told "Good Morning America" that he initially
thought a friend was running toward him to try to surprise him with a bear hug.
Instead,
"he picked me up and body-slammed me and put me on the ground and told me
to turn over and shut my mouth, and put the cuffs on me," Blake told ABC.
He said he
cooperated and tried to explain who he was and provide his identification but
that his explanations were ignored.
"I'm shaken
up," Blake said Thursday on "Good Morning America." "A
couple bumps and bruises, but all right."
Blake also can
take solace in the support he's received around the tennis world.
One of the
women's game's all-time greats, Martina Navratilova, took to Twitter to call
the situation "unacceptable" and "just outrageous."
And the sport's governing body stateside, the U.S. Tennis
Association, said in a statement Thursday that it is "deeply concerned
about this troubling incident."
"James is
the embodiment of a model citizen whose triumphs on and off the court continue
to inspire tennis fans and nonfans alike," the USTA said. "We will
continue to offer our support to James in any way we can as this investigation
unfolds."
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