New York mayor responds quickly after arrest of tennis star

It was the kind of startling episode that Mayor Bill de Blasio sought to eliminate: a black man tackled to the ground and handcuffed by police officers for an offence, it turned out, he did not commit.

The unprovoked manhandling of James Blake, the international tennis star, by a team of white officers outside a hotel in Manhattan on Wednesday quickly gained wide exposure.

It also has renewed scrutiny of de Blasio’s ability to curb the aggressive policing that, as a Democratic candidate for mayor, he had pledged to erase.

While the mayor has not made any public statements on the matter, his administration has been quick to respond. De Blasio called Blake’s cellphone early Thursday to personally apologize. The two did not connect, and the mayor was hoping to reach the tennis player later in the day, aides said.

The mayor’s press secretary released a statement just hours after Blake’s experience came to light, that City Hall officials “deeply regret the incident”.

A few hours later, police officials announced that one officer involved in arresting Blake had been placed on modified duty.

The police commissioner, William J Bratton, then convened a news conference Thursday morning to announce an investigation into what he called an inappropriate arrest; Bratton added that he, too, had tried to reach Blake to apologize. The tennis player, Bratton said in an interview Wednesday evening, "has a right to be upset".

For some, Blake’s experience has echoes of the advice that de Blasio said he gave his son, Dante, who, like Blake, is biracial, about being cautious when interacting with police officers. Like those remarks, any comments by the mayor about the Blake episode are bound to be dissected by supporters and critics alike.

Policing has been arguably the most difficult field of governance for the mayor, whose raw criticism of stop-and-frisk tactics galvanized political supporters but bred open resentment among the police ranks. The mayor has tried to strike a balance, empathizing with the frustrations of black and Latino New Yorkers while showing respect for work of the police.

"It's tricky," said Christina Greer, a political science professor at Fordham, who has urged de Blasio to move faster in reforming the Police Department. She said she hoped that de Blasio would use Blake's situation to acknowledge that he has more work to do in reforming the police.

But Greer also said she was upset by Bratton's comments on CNN on Thursday morning, when the commissioner said that "race has nothing at all to do with" Blake's arrest. Bratton said that the officers had a photograph of a suspect who "looks like the twin brother of Mr Blake." (Blake has downplayed any suggestion that he was racially profiled, although he told the Daily News that in his mind, "there's probably a race factor involved".)

Greer, who is black, said those comments were akin to saying “we all look alike.” She said she believed that the mayor’s message about police reform “hadn’t trickled down”.

Councilman Brad Lander, a Democrat from Brooklyn, said he believed that de Blasio had handled the situation, so far, with the right tone. "The administration responded well here, quickly making clear the use of force was inappropriate," Lander said Thursday. "But Blake's arrest throws into sharp relief that there's still a long way to go.

“Most African-American men in New York City don’t have celebrity status to call attention to whether their arrests are appropriate or not.”