Yeah.
This really happened.
Retired black tennis star James Blake, in an NYPD double-fault, was slammed to a Manhattan sidewalk and handcuffed by a white cop in a brutal case of mistaken identity.
The 35-year-old Blake, once ranked No. 4 in the world, suffered a cut to his left elbow and bruises to his left leg as five plainclothes cops eventually held him for 15 minutes Wednesday outside the Grand Hyatt Hotel.
“It was definitely scary and definitely crazy,” Blake told the Daily News. “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.”
Of course, Blake is right. This absolutely should not have happened, but that much is a obvious to all of us. There are questions we should be asking, though.
1. Did the New York Police Department tackle, cut, and bruise John Gotti? How about Bernie Madoff? Why exactly was James Blake tackled in the first place? Even if he was the person they claimed had committed credit card fraud (which he wasn't), that doesn't really explain the brutality. Blake didn't run. It appears an ugly racial double standard exists in which brute force is needed to arrest a peaceful black man suspected of committing a white collar crime, when comparable force isn't used on white suspects accused of even more egregious crimes.
Keep reading for more burning questions.
2. It seems particularly preposterous that in trying to collar someone suspected of identity theft, the NYPD got the guy's identity wrong. What measures are in place to ensure this doesn't happen again? While Blake lived to see another day, this could've been horribly worse—which is a sad state of affairs.
3. NYPD Commissioner William Bratton has already stated that race wasn't a factor in this arrest, but what does that really mean? Could it be that the white officers who assaulted and arrested him didn't have the racial radar to tell the difference between Blake and some other black man they were looking for? Did they believe that Blake was going to be violent? If so, why, and does race have anything to do with that?
We have to get past the notion that unless an officer uses a racial slur, race and racism aren't real factors.