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NYPD wants to apologize to former tennis star for mistakenly cuffing him

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James Blake (161241)
James Blake

New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton said Thursday he wants to apologize to former tennis star James Blake, who was mistakenly tackled and handcuffed by police in a sting operation that went awry outside a Manhattan hotel Wednesday. Bratton insisted race was not a factor in the incident.

“It should not have happened,” Bratton said at a press conference, adding that Mayor Bill de Blasio also wants to apologize to Blake, whom they haven’t been able to contact yet.

“I don’t believe at that race was a factor,” Bratton said. “This rush to put a race tag on it, I’m sorry, that’s not involved in this at all.”

Blake is biracial. Several officers made the arrest outside the Grand Hyatt Hotel and one of them, a white undercover officer, has been placed on desk duty.

Blake, once ranked No. 4 in the world, told the New York Daily News that “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. … I was just standing there. I wasn’t running. It’s not even close (to being OK). It’s blatantly unnecessary.”

Blake told the Daily News as many as five plainclothes police officers tackled him. He was waiting for a car to pick him up and take him to the U.S. Open tennis tournament, where he’s doing corporate appearances, the paper said.

Blake, 35, spent five or 10 minutes with his hands cuffed behind his back before police realized they had the wrong guy and let him go, Bratton said.

Detectives from the Identity Theft Task Force had gone to the hotel at midday Wednesday to arrest people purchasing high-end shoes with fraudulent credit cards, NYPD Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce said.

Officers set up the sting after a company that delivered goods on demand notified police that a group of people had purchased $18,000 in items using fraudulent credit cards, Boyce said.

Two Britons arrested at hotel

At the hotel, a courier delivered the goods to one man and police arrested him, Boyce said, identifying the suspect as a white male from England visiting the United States on a student visa.

“That courier then told the owner of the service provider that the individual standing 8 feet away, Mr. James Blake, was the other perpetrator” in the earlier incident, Boyce said.

Officers also identified Blake as a suspect from a photo given to police by the company supplying the goods, Boyce said.

The company got the photo off Instagram based on the name of a person they’d done business with, Boyce said.

“If you look at the photo … it’s a reasonable likeness to Mr. Blake,” Boyce said. “They look like twins.”

But the Instagram photo can’t be shown to the press, he said, because it turned out to be the image of an innocent person, not anybody involved in the fraud case.

Blake was let go shortly after a retired New York police officer informed detectives that he was a tennis player.

Police went inside the hotel and arrested a second suspect, also a Briton, Boyce said.

Those two Britons were charged with identity theft and credit card fraud.

Bratton has ordered an internal investigation. He wants to know how the mistake was made, if excessive force was used and why detention protocols were not followed.

Did police use too much force?

“Was the force used inappropriate? The initial review is we believe it may not have been,” he said.

Bratton said he’s heard reports one of the officers did not display a badge. That may have been because he was undercover, Bratton said.

Blake, 35, a former Olympian, told “Good Morning America” that he initially thought a friend was running toward him to try to surprise him with a bear hug.

Instead, “he 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,” Blake told ABC.

He said he cooperated and tried to explain who he was and provide his identification but that his explanations were ignored.

“I’m shaken up,” Blake said Thursday on “Good Morning America.” “A couple bumps and bruises, but all right.”

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