Claire-ification: Arrest of former tennis pro should be final straw on police brutality

The headline was unfortunately commonplace, alerting the public to yet another unnecessarily violent arrest involving an unsuspecting black man.

As the country had its attention turned to New York’s Arthur Ashe Stadium for the U.S. Open, and away from the police brutality stories that have dominated the news cycle this summer, Wednesday marked a regrettable intersection of the two.

Former top-10 tennis player James Blake was tackled by a plainclothes police officer outside his Manhattan hotel in an errant arrest Wednesday.

Several police officers rushed to handcuff him, believing he was a wanted suspect in a fraudulent credit card scheme.

Blake told CNN that, had he not cooperated in his arrest, he worries that the outcome could have been far worse. The tennis player also contended that race most likely played a factor in his wrongful arrest.

Following the incident, Blake called for the officer who initiated the arrest, James Frascatore, to be fired. The aggressor has a history of violent arrests, mainly of people of color, as two black men came forward following Blake’s arrest with their own experiences of altercations with Frascatore.

New York’s mayor and police commissioner immediately apologized. While other victims of similar situations have sometimes been criminalized with allegations of drug use, as in the case of Michael Brown, or criminal history, as with Eric Garner, the arrest of Blake was immediately condemned.

It doesn’t matter that Blake is an athlete. He’s a person. No different from Garner, who died in a similarly violent arrest just across the bay in Staten Island.

This disparity of handling the aftermath of these encounters is unjust and stems from Blake’s public profile, which only compounds the problem and suggests a misunderstanding of ramifications by the police force.

Blake sustained cuts and bruises in his arrest. Even if he had been the suspect the police were looking for, there would have been little reason for using such force, especially when the perpetrator is not accused of any violent crime.

Police departments across the country need to take these incidents seriously. An isolated event in New York, such as Blake’s arrest, is capable of sending increasing distrust of the police force throughout all of the country’s precincts and increasing the likelihood of further episodes.

The summer weeks that are meant to be a celebration of tennis are now marred as yet another community – that of professional tennis – is impacted by police brutality, this time one which is largely dominated by those untouched by this issue – upper-class white citizens.

The reality is that, although Blake brings a level of personal experience and celebrity that this social issue has yet to experience, it won’t be enough to turn the tide of police brutality.

Apologies are far from enough to correctly address this issue, and New York needs to take serious measures to ensure the transgressions that have occurred in its precinct do not reoccur, after yet another person and community has been victimized by these incidents.