The Officer who Tackled Blake is Famous for Civilian Complaints-Also The Twins-
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| Plainclothes cop(Gothamist pic.) |
James Frascatore, the plainclothes NYPD officer who tackled retired tennis star James Blake to the ground outside of his midtown hotel on Wednesday afternoon and handcuffed him without explantation, has a lengthy record of civilian complaints, according to a WNYC police misconduct investigation from last winter.
According to WNYC After the incident, Frascatore reportedly lied under oath.,
Q> Why does it take 7 complaints and one as serious as perjury and still the officer remains undercover, on duty, working the streets of New York in Manhattan. WHY? How many does it take for someone to say may be lets bring charges and have a judge or jury decide?…oh I forgot..this is a a mother of a strong union…how about desk duty with a last warning? (adamfoxie)
Frascatore racked up five civilian complaints over the course of seven months in 2013. In one instance, Frascatore arrested a woman for allegedly failing to quickly turn over a bicycle they had deemed evidence. After that incident, Frascatore reportedly lied under oath.
Audio of the bicycle arrest is featured in WNYC's original report on Frascatore. Nafeesah Hines can be heard speaking to Frascatore, who has just arrested her boyfriend, Warren Diggs, for riding his bike on the sidewalk. Frascatore does not provide his name or shield number when Hines asks for it. (According to Blake, when Frascatore tackled him on Wednesday, the officer did not have a visible badge, nor did he identify himself.)
"Could you back up a little bit? Because I feel threatened," Hines says on the cellphone recording.
"No," says Frascatore. "I'm about to come in your house to take the bike. Is this what you want your kids to witness? That's fine." Her children are heard crying in the background.
Frascatore's complaint record was not enough to place him on modified duty—until the highly publicized incident involving Blake, a formerly nationally-ranked tennis star. The officer has since been assigned desk work.
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| They look very similar but the question remains of the treatment that a NYC police office will offer a suspect and as it turns out the man the cop was looking for was also innocent. Had this famous player not been taken down like a suspect or anybody else would we be talking about this? This is not an isolated incident and one most understand by watching other police take downs, this is the way these cops operate and sometimes they kill the suspect if it’s not someone healthy enough to take the trauma of one man or a few coming down on them. Does it matter that these two guys have a similar smile or not since they are both black??(Adam Gonzalez) |
Yesterday afternoon, TMZ obtained a photograph of the suspect Frascatore and his fellow officers were looking to arrest on Wednesday, as part of an ongoing investigation into the purchase of cellphones using "fraudulent cards." "They look like twins," Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce told CBS.
Earlier Thursday, Police Commissioner Bratton also emphasized the physical similarities between the two suspects, using their appearance as leverage to argue that the forceful arrest had no racial undertones (Blake is African American, and all five arresting officers are white). "Let's put that nonsense to rest right now, race has nothing to do with this," he said. "We have a witness who identified Mr. Blake as an individual who he had sold a phone to and had been given a false credit card."
The NYPD's stance on the matter has been met with skepticism from Blake's family members. "If James had looked European I don't think the violence perpetrated by the officer would have been the same," Blake's stepmother Linda Blake told the News on Thursday. “All they had to do was go up to him and say, 'Excuse me sir, could I see some identification.'"
After a day of conflicting accounts—Bratton said he was trying to contact Blake and apologize, Blake pointed out that it wasn't very difficult to find his contact information, and that the NYPD must not be trying very hard—the NYPD released a statement yesterday afternoon assuring that Bratton had made contact.
"I spoke to Mr. Blake a short time ago and personally apologized for yesterday’s incident," he said, without further elaboration.
"I'd like the apology to be more in terms of James as an illustration of excessive force used on men of color for non-violent crimes," Linda Blake responded publicly.
In the meantime, Patrolmen's Benevolent Association President Patrick Lynch issued a statement in response to Bratton's decision to put Frascatore on desk duty. "We agree with the Police Commissioner that the first story is never the whole story and believe that placing this officer on modified duty is premature and unwarranted," he said. "No police officer should ever face punitive action before a complete review of the facts."
Shortly after Wednesday's incident, Bratton told reporters that Frascatore had been placed on modified duty following review of hotel surveillance footage. Frascatore himself did not come forward. “My concern is that after the release, there’s department protocols that should have been followed but apparently were not,” Bratton said. "Mr. Blake has made a number of comments to the press. That’s how we became aware of the matter.”
Officer Boyce told CBS that the man Blake was mistaken for, whose name has not been released, has also been deemed “innocent of all wrongdoing."
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