Read James Blake’s Response to Punishment of NYPD Cop Who Assaulted Him

By Kenrya Rankin Jun 08, 2018

In September 2015, White, plainclothes New York Police Department (NYD) officer James Frascatore slammed former tennis player James Blake, who is Black, to the concrete outside his hotel in New York City. The cop claimed that he thought Blake was a suspect in an identity theft sting that was happening at the hotel.

Blake filed and then withdrew a complaint against the officer in exchange for a city-funded, CCRB-run fellowship that is supposed to investigate police misconduct. It was a move that drew criticism from Gwen Carr and Constance Malcolm, whose sons Eric Garner and Ramarley Graham died at the hands of NYPD officers.

As Colorlines previously reported, the city’s Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB) investigated the case and issued an excessive force charge against Frascatore for his actions. A departmental trial resulted in a guilty verdict.

New York Daily News reports today (June 8), that Frascatore’s penalty is the loss of five vacation days. The board reportedly recommended that he lose 10 days.

Blake is not pleased with the decision, citing the officer’s history of excessive force and the NYPD’s history of “police abuses” and “unjust killings.”

Blake’s full emailed statement:

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The lack of meaningful discipline for the NYPD officer found guilty of using excessive force against me, while I was simply waiting outside of my hotel, is indicative of a broken disciplinary system. Officer Frascatore had a record of misconduct complaints for the abusive treatment of civilians before he body-slammed me—it was reported that he had five civilian complaints within seven months of 2013. Losing a few vacation days for the use of excessive force, following a history of repeated civilian complaints, is not meaningful discipline. It is this continued failure of the NYPD’s disciplinary system that perpetuates police abuses, brutality and misconduct, and leads to the unjust killings of civilians. Until the de Blasio administration addresses the dysfunction in police accountability and transparency, the problems of abusive policing will remain.