As we inch closer to the college BB season I'll post a series of these kind of question until more BB info is available.
Former tennis star James Blake is owed an apology from NYPD and Mayor de Blasio after being wrongfully cuffed
Andrew Savulich/New York Daily News
Former tennis star James Blake outside the Grand Hyatt Hotel entrance where he was wrongly thrown to the ground and handcuffed by police officers looking for someone else.
He was a young African-American tennis star on the rise, born in Yonkers and raised in Fairfield County, and there was a time at the United States Open tennis tournament, sometimes on the stadium court named after Arthur Ashe, when James Blake made the crowd at Ashe Stadium go wild for him.
There was a time when they thought at the Open that Blake, who left Harvard early to chase his tennis dreams, would at least make it to the last weekend, which he never did, as close as he came.
But they did love him at the Open when he was younger, during this long, amazing dry spell in men’s tennis when no American man has won a major title since Andy Roddick won the Open back in 2003.
“You’d think they could say, ‘Hey, we want to talk to you,’” Blake said. “‘We are looking into something.’ I was just standing there. I wasn’t running. It’s not even close (to being OK). It’s blatantly unnecessary. You would think that at some point they would get the memo that this isn’t OK, but it’s seems there’s no stopping it.”
Blake played with flair and passion and speed, played to the people in the crowd like a showman, and he at least made the quarters of the Open twice. And was once ranked No. 4 in the world.
James Blake also won 10 tournaments and millions in prize money before retiring for good at the Open two years ago, after 14 years as a pro. Blake got married after that and became a father and on Wednesday afternoon, he was a young man, black, on the ground in front of the Grand Hyatt on 42nd St., right next to Grand Central, because some undercover cops mistook him for a criminal.
This is what can happen, even if you once were a tennis star in New York City at this time of year and could do a pretty good job of rocking the house at Arthur Ashe Stadium against stars such as Andre Agassi, once the cheering stops.
“It’s hard to believe this is still happening,” James Blake said to Wayne Coffey of the Daily News after Blake had been put on the ground and handcuffed before the cops who rushed him because they thought he was the bad guy in some scam about identity theft realized, much too late, that they had the wrong guy.
Blake was 25 that year and Agassi was 35, trying to make the kind of run to the semis, at a slightly younger age, that Jimmy Connors had made 14 years earlier, at the age of 39. But Blake, running all the way to Roosevelt Ave. that night to run down shots, was trying to play himself into the semis of the Open, trying to write his own big tennis story, and take out one of the great American players of all time.
He got ahead 6-3, 6-3. He looked young, Agassi looked old. But then Agassi got the third set at 6-3 and got the fourth set by the same score. People who were there that night will tell you how the noise kept getting bigger at Ashe, the way it can, the longer this match went. Finally Agassi won it, 7-6, in the fifth.
When it was over Blake said, “It couldn’t have been more fun to lose.”
Agassi said, “At 1:15 in the morning, for 20,000 people to still be here, I wasn’t the winner. Tennis was.”
Blake was a part of a moment in American tennis like that. He did as much to make the night as Agassi did. Now he flies in from San Diego on the red eye to attend the 2015 U.S. Open and gets made as a criminal and put on the sidewalk by overzealous cops, all white, on 42nd St. while he is waiting for a courtesy car.
“You’d think they could say, ‘Hey, we want to talk to you,’” Blake said. “‘We are looking into something.’ I was just standing there. I wasn’t running. It’s not even close (to being OK). It’s blatantly unnecessary. You would think that at some point they would get the memo that this isn’t OK, but it’s seems there’s no stopping it.”
This was about Blake being made by a couple of people who said he had been involved in an identity-theft ring operating in the area around the Hyatt and Grand Central for the past week. Before long he was in handcuffs. As it was all happening, according to Blake, he told the cops rousting him to look at his driver’s license, and a credential for the Open that he had in one of his pockets.
Blake said later that one of the cops involved had apologized when he realized they had the wrong guy. The cop who put Blake on the ground — again according to James Blake — never said a word to him. It had apparently been easier putting Blake on the ground like that than forming a simple declarative sentence about being stupid. This wasn’t a member of the NYPD stopping someone for suspicious activity, unless a young black guy waiting for a courtesy car at an official U.S. Open hotel now qualifies as justification for excessive force, here or anywhere in America in the summer of 2015.
Blake’s version of things is that once he was down on the sidewalk the first cop to get to him told him to roll over and not say a word. Blake said he told the cop, “I’m going to do whatever you say.”
The cop told James Blake he was in safe hands. Sure he was. Blake liked New York City better when he had a tennis racket in his hands.
The NYPD owes him an apology. So does the mayor. In what we’re told is such a safe summer in the city, James Blake wasn’t.
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/m...deserves-apology-nypd-mayor-article-1.2354651
Former tennis star James Blake is owed an apology from NYPD and Mayor de Blasio after being wrongfully cuffed
Former tennis star James Blake outside the Grand Hyatt Hotel entrance where he was wrongly thrown to the ground and handcuffed by police officers looking for someone else.
He was a young African-American tennis star on the rise, born in Yonkers and raised in Fairfield County, and there was a time at the United States Open tennis tournament, sometimes on the stadium court named after Arthur Ashe, when James Blake made the crowd at Ashe Stadium go wild for him.
There was a time when they thought at the Open that Blake, who left Harvard early to chase his tennis dreams, would at least make it to the last weekend, which he never did, as close as he came.
But they did love him at the Open when he was younger, during this long, amazing dry spell in men’s tennis when no American man has won a major title since Andy Roddick won the Open back in 2003.
“You’d think they could say, ‘Hey, we want to talk to you,’” Blake said. “‘We are looking into something.’ I was just standing there. I wasn’t running. It’s not even close (to being OK). It’s blatantly unnecessary. You would think that at some point they would get the memo that this isn’t OK, but it’s seems there’s no stopping it.”
Blake played with flair and passion and speed, played to the people in the crowd like a showman, and he at least made the quarters of the Open twice. And was once ranked No. 4 in the world.
James Blake also won 10 tournaments and millions in prize money before retiring for good at the Open two years ago, after 14 years as a pro. Blake got married after that and became a father and on Wednesday afternoon, he was a young man, black, on the ground in front of the Grand Hyatt on 42nd St., right next to Grand Central, because some undercover cops mistook him for a criminal.
This is what can happen, even if you once were a tennis star in New York City at this time of year and could do a pretty good job of rocking the house at Arthur Ashe Stadium against stars such as Andre Agassi, once the cheering stops.
“It’s hard to believe this is still happening,” James Blake said to Wayne Coffey of the Daily News after Blake had been put on the ground and handcuffed before the cops who rushed him because they thought he was the bad guy in some scam about identity theft realized, much too late, that they had the wrong guy.
Blake was 25 that year and Agassi was 35, trying to make the kind of run to the semis, at a slightly younger age, that Jimmy Connors had made 14 years earlier, at the age of 39. But Blake, running all the way to Roosevelt Ave. that night to run down shots, was trying to play himself into the semis of the Open, trying to write his own big tennis story, and take out one of the great American players of all time.
He got ahead 6-3, 6-3. He looked young, Agassi looked old. But then Agassi got the third set at 6-3 and got the fourth set by the same score. People who were there that night will tell you how the noise kept getting bigger at Ashe, the way it can, the longer this match went. Finally Agassi won it, 7-6, in the fifth.
When it was over Blake said, “It couldn’t have been more fun to lose.”
Agassi said, “At 1:15 in the morning, for 20,000 people to still be here, I wasn’t the winner. Tennis was.”
Blake was a part of a moment in American tennis like that. He did as much to make the night as Agassi did. Now he flies in from San Diego on the red eye to attend the 2015 U.S. Open and gets made as a criminal and put on the sidewalk by overzealous cops, all white, on 42nd St. while he is waiting for a courtesy car.
“You’d think they could say, ‘Hey, we want to talk to you,’” Blake said. “‘We are looking into something.’ I was just standing there. I wasn’t running. It’s not even close (to being OK). It’s blatantly unnecessary. You would think that at some point they would get the memo that this isn’t OK, but it’s seems there’s no stopping it.”
This was about Blake being made by a couple of people who said he had been involved in an identity-theft ring operating in the area around the Hyatt and Grand Central for the past week. Before long he was in handcuffs. As it was all happening, according to Blake, he told the cops rousting him to look at his driver’s license, and a credential for the Open that he had in one of his pockets.
Blake said later that one of the cops involved had apologized when he realized they had the wrong guy. The cop who put Blake on the ground — again according to James Blake — never said a word to him. It had apparently been easier putting Blake on the ground like that than forming a simple declarative sentence about being stupid. This wasn’t a member of the NYPD stopping someone for suspicious activity, unless a young black guy waiting for a courtesy car at an official U.S. Open hotel now qualifies as justification for excessive force, here or anywhere in America in the summer of 2015.
Blake’s version of things is that once he was down on the sidewalk the first cop to get to him told him to roll over and not say a word. Blake said he told the cop, “I’m going to do whatever you say.”
The cop told James Blake he was in safe hands. Sure he was. Blake liked New York City better when he had a tennis racket in his hands.
The NYPD owes him an apology. So does the mayor. In what we’re told is such a safe summer in the city, James Blake wasn’t.
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/m...deserves-apology-nypd-mayor-article-1.2354651
