Former tennis star James Blake says the New York City cop who slammed him to the ground should lose his job. “I don’t think this person should ever have a badge or a gun again,” Blake told the Associated Press on Saturday. ; Last Wednesday, as Blake stood outside the Grand Hyatt in midtown Manhattan, plainclothes officer James Frascatore ;slammed the innocent man to the ground and cuffed him. Video released by the NYPD ;Friday shows the terrifying incident. (function()var src_url=”https://spshared.5min.com/Scripts/PlayerSeed.js?playList=519075159&height=381&width=570&sid=577&origin=SOLR&videoGroupID=155847&relatedNumOfResults=100&responsive=false&relatedMode=2&relatedBottomHeight=60&companionPos=&hasCompanion=false&autoStart=false&colorPallet=%23FFEB00&videoControlDisplayColor=%23191919&shuffle=0&isAP=1&pgType=cmsPlugin&pgTypeId=addToPost-top&onVideoDataLoaded=track5min….
Former tennis star James Blake says the New York City cop who slammed him to the ground should lose his job.
“I don’t think this person should ever have a badge or a gun again,” Blake told the Associated Press on Saturday. ;
Last Wednesday, as Blake stood outside the Grand Hyatt in midtown Manhattan, plainclothes officer James Frascatore ;slammed the innocent man to the ground and cuffed him. Video released by the NYPD ;Friday shows the terrifying incident.
“The first words out of my mouth were ‘I’m 100 percent cooperating,'” Blake told CNN ;Saturday.
Blake, who had been ranked as high as No. 4 in the world before retiring after the 2013 U.S. Open, was misidentified by a cooperating witness as being part of an identity theft scheme when he was tackled, police have said. ;
Officer ;James Frascatore has had multiple complaints levied against him in the past and has been ;sued four times for using excessive force. ;All four cases are still ongoing.
“I’ve seen [the video] a few times now, and they talk about being desensitized when you see something a lot, and I’m definitely not at that point because it still strikes a nerve,” Blake ;told ;CNN. “It’s still so frustrating and angering to see how vulnerable I was and what he did with that. To be a police officer you’re given a lot of rights, you’re given certain powers. And then to abuse them is just wrong.”
NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton apologized ;to Blake on Thursday, but Blake said an apology is “not enough.”
“This officer didn’t treat his badge with respect and honor the way we’re supposed to,” he told CNN. “He doesn’t deserve to ever have that badge again.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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James Blake Says Cop Who Slammed Him ‘Doesn’t Deserve’ To Have Badge
