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Caseone, I hope you ain't visiting nyc any time soon.
Sheeit, i work right across the street from Grand Central...that coulda been me.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/11/nyregion/james-blake-new-york-police-officer.html
The New York Police Department commissioner apologized on Thursday for the mistaken arrest of James Blake, a retired top-10 professional tennis player, who said he was slammed to the ground outside his hotel in Midtown Manhattan.
The commissioner, William J. Bratton, said he wanted “to extend a personal apology’’ to Mr. Blake.
The officer who detained Mr. Blake, who is biracial, has been placed on desk duty. Mr. Bratton expressed concern about “the inappropriateness of the amount of force that was used during the arrest.”
An initial review of video evidence of the arrest, Mr. Bratton said, led him to believe that it may not have been appropriate.
Mr. Blake said he was slammed to the ground by a police officer outside his hotel on Wednesday and detained for 15 minutes after being mistaken for a suspect in an investigation of possible credit card fraud.
A team of officers, all of whom were white, approached Mr. Blake after a courier identified him as having fraudulently bought merchandise, police officials said.
The Police Department’s decision to place the officer on desk duty was a tacit acknowledgment that video of the encounter, which has been reviewed by investigators, raised questions about the officer’s actions.
The episode immediately drew criticism at a time when officers’ tactics are under withering scrutiny across the country, and police agencies and elected officials are trying to address concerns about how officers treat black people.
Mr. Blake, 35, whose mother is white and whose father was black, said he had cuts and bruises as a result of the encounter. He was in New York to make appearances for corporate sponsors at the United States Open on Wednesday when he said he left the Grand Hyatt New York on East 42nd Street and was accosted by a plainclothes officer.
“I was standing there doing nothing — not running, not resisting, in fact smiling,” Mr. Blake said on Thursday morning in an interview with ABC News. Then, he said, an officer “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.”
Mr. Blake, who retired two years ago, said the officer who pushed him to the ground never identified himself and was not wearing a badge that was visible.
The police commissioner, William J. Bratton, speaking on CNN on Thursday morning, rejected the notion that race was a factor in the misidentification of Mr. Blake.
“Let’s put that nonsense to rest right now,” Mr. Bratton said. “Race has nothing to do with this.”
The commissioner said that the police had a photograph of a suspect in the credit card fraud investigation, and that the man “looks like the twin brother of Mr. Blake.”
The officers who detained Mr. Blake acted on information from someone at the hotel who identified him as having bought a phone with false credit card information, Mr. Bratton said. The Police Department placed one officer on modified assignment, or desk duty, after reviewing video of the episode.
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Mr. Bratton also said that investigators had been trying to speak to Mr. Blake at his hotel, without success, and that they would try to reach him at the Open on Thursday.
Mr. Blake, speaking on ABC, denied that anyone from the Police Department had tried to contact him and asked for an apology and an explanation for the officers’ behavior.
Mr. Blake said he immediately told the officers he would cooperate in order to avoid a miscommunication. He said he felt “lucky” that he did not happen to show any signs of resisting as the officer rushed toward him.
“Instead of having a little bruise on my leg, I might have some broken bones or some actual injuries, because it didn’t seem like he was slowing down and he was going to continue that tackle,” Mr. Blake said.
He said he was speaking out to “let people know that this happens too often, and most of the time it’s not to someone like me.”
Plainclothes officers were at the hotel on Wednesday investigating a ring believed to be using fraudulent credit cards to buy cellphones, according to an official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the internal investigation into the episode involving Mr. Blake was continuing.
As part of the credit card investigation, the police had a private service deliver phones to a suspect at the hotel, the official said. Once the delivery took place, the suspect was arrested, the official said.
The delivery person then pointed out to the police two other people in the lobby to whom he said he had delivered phones a day earlier.
At that point, the official said, the officers “detained those two people as well.” One was Mr. Blake.
He was released after a retired police officer recognized him. -The Knicks’ coaching search still includes a lone frontrunner, Kurt Rambis, whose qualifications for the position include a strong relationship with Jackson and a willingness to take the job.
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