NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Updated: Thursday, September 10, 2015, 1:54 PM
Andrew Savulich/New York Daily News
Tennis star James Blake, 35, said he was standing outside the Grand Hyatt Hotel on E. 42nd St. Wednesday when a member of the NYPD Financial Crimes Task Force slammed him to the ground.
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The 6-foot-1 Blake was once ranked fourth in the world.
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The cop who tackled former tennis star James Blake to the ground had every right to use force — but was not supposed to overdo it, an NYPD source with knowledge of police training said Thursday.
“If an officer is moving into arrest someone, he has the right to restrain the person, but he has to use the least amount of force to restrain as possible,” said the source, who oversees training at the NYPD Academy as well as the officer retraining that was ordered after the police chokehold death of Eric Garner. The source spoke on condition of anonymity.
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“Was it appropriate to take the man off his feet?” the source said. “That depends on the threat really, and the nature of the crime.”
Blake, 35, who was once ranked fourth in the world, said he was standing outside the Grand Hyatt Hotel on E. 42nd St. Wednesday when a member of the NYPD Financial Crimes Task Force slammed him to the ground.
Police Commissioner Bill Bratton said that the officer responsible, as well as his team, thought Blake was a man involved in a credit card fraud investigation.
Blake “looks like (the suspect’s) twin brother,” Bratton said.
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Blake, whose mother is white and whose late father was black, was released within 15 minutes after cops learned he wasn’t involved.
The source, who said he has not seen the video of the apparently botched arrest, said takedown moves are common when making an arrest.
“When a policeman takes enforcement action, he’s going to restrain someone,” the source said. “This was not a stop situation; this was an arrest. The crime was not a forcible theft, but we don’t know if the suspect they were looking for had a violent past. All of those factors come into play. The individual has to make that call.”
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“When a policeman takes enforcement action, he’s going to restrain someone,” the NYPD training expert said.
Other NYPD officials agreed with the training specialist’s assessment.
“Tackling is actually the least offensive way to capture a guy when it comes to physicality,” said another high-ranking NYPD source. “This is not deadly physical force and no one wants to get into a foot pursuit.”
Blake’s race was not a factor, Bratton said, but the 6-foot-1 tennis player’s athletic build might have been, the source said.
“When you go in for an arrest, you have to size the guy up,” the cop explained. “If he looks lean and muscular and could rabbit pretty easily, you want to dust him and get him into custody pretty quickly.”
What troubled the specialist more than the takedown was that the cop didn’t apologize to Blake after he was released.
Go Nakamura/For New York Daily News
“The two words that police officers find it hardest to say is the two words that they should say most of the time,” the trainer said.
A new session entitled “The Power of Apology” has been added to the academy’s curriculum and the NYPD’s Blue Courage, Smart Policing sessions put in place after Garner was killed.
It was not immediately known if the officer involved in Blake’s arrest had received the new training.
“The two words that police officers find it hardest to say is the two words that they should say most of the time,” the trainer said. “One is explanation and the other is apology. They have to apologize when they are wrong and they have to get it through their head that they have to explain their actions.”
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Daily News – Sports