The 2015 U.S. Open was supposed to be remembered for the Serena calendar Grand Slam. Instead, it will be known for the body slam of James Blake on a New York sidewalk by NYPD officers. That is sad, unfortunate, but in the long run, not a bad thing.
On his way to make an appearance for a U.S. Open corporate sponsor Blake was slammed to the sidewalk and handcuffed. The police were searching for suspects alleged to be involved in a credit card fraud scheme and believed Blake to be one of the buyers based on an Instagram photo they obtained.
NYPD police commissioner William Bratton said the suspect looked like Mr. Blake’s “twin brother,” a line taken straight out of the “all black guys look alike” handbook. It turned out not only Blake, but the man they were initially looking for had no involvement in the fraud scheme.
You can see in the video the plain-clothes officer wearing a white t-shirt and jeans doesn’t spend much time identifying himself. Luckily Blake was as calm as he was. If someone in plain clothes ran up and tackled the average citizen, their natural response would be fight or flight. Either way, in the aftermath that would have been used as cause for the police officer to use force.
The arresting officer, James Frascatore, is a defendant in four civil cases stating he used excessive force during false arrests in the four years he’s been on the job.
If there are pending cases, it begs the question of whether or not the officer should be working in the first place. In an evidentiary way, the question will now be asked as it shows precedent if Blake exercises his right to take civil action against the officer and the police force.
The police officers in question never reported the wrongful arrest, so it would not have been revealed if Blake didn’t speak up. And it wouldn’t have been widely known if Blake wasn’t a famous athlete currently residing in the media capital of North America.
Bratton has claimed they made an effort to reach out to Blake to apologize and have Internal Affairs investigate further. Somehow, the media found Blake’s number shortly after the incident but the department that arrested him had no way to get in contact with him.
The fact that a Harvard-educated millionaire professional athlete, with no criminal history, leaving an expensive hotel in Midtown Manhattan was attacked by white plainclothes officers shows that no matter what your class or status you can’t escape your race, and in this case the prejudice that comes with it.
Even if Blake was guilty for credit card fraud, that is a white-collar, non-violent crime so why would the initial approach be violent towards him? That aggressive nature by default is why many African-Americans are scared of the police even when they are innocent.
Sadly, Blake’s isn’t the only case of police brutality on an athlete in Manhattan this year. Police were investigating the stabbing of NBA player Chris Copeland outside 1 Oak nightclub and felt Thabo Sefolosha of the Atlanta Hawks was ignoring orders to stay away from the crime scene. Four police officers arrested him, breaking a bone in his right leg, which caused him to miss the rest of the season.
The district attorney announced it was dropping charges against his teammate, Pero Antic, who was arrested with Sefolosha, but the officers involved in the incident remain on active duty. Sefolosha declined a plea deal erasing criminal charges after his confrontation with police as he wants to fight in court to make a point.
Blake had a level head about his mistreatment, saying, “I do think most cops are doing a great job keeping us safe, but when you police with reckless abandon, you need to be held accountable,” on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
The accountability is what has been lacking and what makes the recent cases of celebrity mistreatment potential watershed moments. This happens every day to people who look like Blake and Sefolosha, except they don’t happen to be world-class athletes. The media doesn’t care about their plight. Strangers don’t consider them as people to look up to. Thus the cries for those black men go unheard. Their injustice falls on deaf ears.
Yet they are not any less or any more violated than Sefolosha because they don’t have great skills around the net. The net value of Blake and Sefolosha’s misfortune is the absurdity of their mistreatment provides them a speaker box to illuminate how readily this happens to others.
“This happens too often and most of the time it’s not to someone like me,” said Blake. “This is what happens every day and this needs to be the start of a conversation about the ‘us and them’ attitude and how to deal with the policing in the communities where this occurs most frequently.”
Yet change can be fast-tracked with discourse. Parked outside the Grand Hyatt ever since have been TV crews doing live hits and news stories on the matter.
Blake’s ordeal struck a chord with me because for myself and most black men of similar age, his experience is shared. “Driving while black” is far from a myth as I’ve been stopped well over 20 times since gaining a driver’s license. I’ve been questioned and carded while walking in neighbourhoods where I don’t look like I belong. I have even been stopped until the officer realized I was on TV.
The ‘I love you on Tim and Sid’ compliment by the officer fell on deaf ears as I was the same person the officer allegedly ‘loved’ when I was asked, “what am I up to and where am I going?” Aside from some minor traffic infractions and parking tickets I’ve never committed or even been charged with a crime. Yet I’ve even had my front door pounded on and had an officer aggressively approach me and verbally insult me. As he began to forcibly make his way into my home, his assisting officer realized my bewilderment as to why he was accosting me might be genuine. The officers made the mistake and went to the wrong address but I conveniently ‘fit the description.”
I tell these tales not because they are unique to me, in fact they are not. I tell them to illustrate that in the presence of police, when you feel guilty even though you know you’re innocent, and feel the need to prevent even the slightest flinch, sneeze, or look the wrong way as to stay safe and not have your actions misconstrued is a sense of imprisonment even in a free society.
Which is why I was taught at an early age how to interact with a cop not solely because you should show him or her respect, but because you need to stay alive. However compliant your responses are doesn’t mean you’ll be harm free, which is sadly why we’ve seen recent cases where African-Americans have taken their chances and run from confrontation with police rather than face it.
To be clear, this isn’t a rant against law enforcement. Police officers have the most dangerous job in our society. A job where everyday you punch in for work, you take your life into your hands. Police officers are being paid to protect us against the worst things in our society. I don’t envy their task but I do respect it. When things like this happen to celebrities, they are highly publicized and embarrass the police force. It also makes the greater public loathe the police, which makes a tough job even tougher.
The hope is these incidents will shine a light on the epidemic for change and pressure good cops into holding their brethren accountable so their good work isn’t in vain and good names aren’t besmirched.
This issue has to be addressed to protect the myriad of good police officers and make their dealings with the public easier. The NYPD has over 35,000 officers – they shouldn’t all be tarnished because of the foul actions of few. One bad apple shouldn’t spoil the bunch.
However, as a minority, when I am approached by a police officer, human nature doesn’t have me recollect all the positive experiences I’ve had with a cop, but it brings forth the bad ones.
The scary part is there have been so many deaths of black citizens at the hands of police in recent memory that we have become numb to it when it is reported. You may have heard of Michael Brown and Eric Garner because they got five minutes of infamy on the 24/7 news cycle.
But the names like 25-year-old Sean Bell, who was killed the day before his wedding, or 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who was killed after the police were on the scene for seven seconds as he was playing with a BB gun at a park, often go forgotten. Even the most educated among us probably couldn’t cite the names nor the details of the 76 black people killed at the hands of Police from 1999-2014.
As Mother Jones reported, police killed black people almost twice as much as any other racial group.
The issue is systemic. Based on the NYPD’s own study in New York, two out of five stops end in excessive force, which is why the police commission spent over $100 million on excessive force complaints between 2013-2014.
It has become such an issue it was even addressed in a New York fashion week show to help drive awareness to a unique audience.
Blake has already become vocal, saying in a statement, “I am determined to use my voice to turn this unfortunate incident into a catalyst for change in the relationship between the police and the public they serve.”
Ironically, Blake’s incident happened in the same week, in the same city that Venus and Serena Williams faced off and drew a bigger television audience than the New York Yankees and Mets. This weekend, the U.S. Open trophy will be handed out in a stadium named after Arthur Ashe. While there are signs all around us of progress for minorities, women, homosexuals in sport, outside that arena we have a reminder that progress is slow and unapologetic.
Sport is an agent for change because it forces us to talk about issues in greater society.
It has forced us to talk about civil rights. It has forced us to talk about domestic abuse. It has forced us to talk about LGBT issues. Now it should force us to talk about racial profiling and police brutality.
If we don’t utilize this moment to allow Thabo Sefolosha and James Blake to speak out, not only will their hardships be in vain, so will those of all the victims who no longer have the chance to do so.