Ways of Grace

by James Blake

  Dedication

  To anyone who has ever chosen to take a stand for something greater than themselves

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Introduction: Mistaken Identity

  1: Early Trailblazers: Accidental Activists

  2: Changing the Game: The Unifying Power of Sports

  3: You Run Like a Girl: Gender Biases in Sports

  4: Shut Up and Play: The Impetus and Social Ramifications of Sports Activism

  5: More Than Just a Game: Sometimes the End Justifies the Means

  6: A Personal Choice: The Athlete as Activist

  Epilogue: The Power of Protest

  Acknowledgments

  Bibliography

  Notes

  Index

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Introduction

  Mistaken Identity

  It is a funny thing the moment when your perception of the world changes. It’s not that anything in reality has actually changed, it is your perception of the world and how you are perceived in it that has been forever indelibly and irrevocably altered. That life-changing moment happened to me September 9, 2015, on a sunny Wednesday afternoon as I stood outside my hotel near a bustling Grand Central Terminal. I was in New York and on my way to the US Open tournament to do corporate appearances for my role as chairman of the United States Tennis Association (USTA) Foundation.

  I have played tennis for most of my thirty-six years, professionally since 1999. My parents loved the game and they passed that love on to me and my older brother, Thomas. My mother, Betty, is British, and my father, Tom, was African American. They met on the court and fell in love playing the game. My mother is in her eighties and she still plays once or twice a week. My oldest daughter is a toddler and already has a racket. I started playing tennis with Thomas and my parents when I was five years old. I began taking lessons when I was ten or eleven. When I turned thirteen I decided to quit other sports and focus exclusively on tennis. That was a suggestion from my dad—not for tennis specifically, but just to pick one thing and be good at it. At that time I was all over the place, as any energetic teenager would be. I had hobbies and loved sports of all kind. Dad told me, “You’re doing a bunch of things; why don’t you pick one and try to really excel at it?” I decided on tennis because I felt I was the best at it, but I also liked the individual aspect of it. Being a professional tennis player is like being an entrepreneur. All the decisions fall to me, but I can customize my game, my training, and my approach, which suits my personality.

  Every weekend my parents, Thomas, and I would leave our house in Yonkers and head to Harlem to play. Even when we moved from Yonkers up to Connecticut, on the weekends we still headed down to the courts in Harlem. When I turned seventeen, I followed my brother to Harvard. I played on the tennis team for two years, from 1997 to 1999. After being approached by an agent my sophomore year, I decided to go pro and play professionally.

  Over the course of my career as a pro tennis player I was among the top four players in the world, and a Davis Cup champion. During that time I wrote my memoir, Breaking Back, about the challenges I faced coming back from a traumatic injury and overcoming a family tragedy. Those fourteen years taught me how to persevere not only on the court but also off the court, as I overcame many challenging professional and personal issues. I retired from pro tennis in 2013. In 2015 I became chairman of the USTA Foundation, which is the charitable arm of the association. My role as chairman keeps me connected to the game I love so much and allows me to stay involved in a very positive way.

  As I stood waiting for the car to arrive to take me to the US Open for sponsor appearances and USTA Foundation meetings I saw a man running toward me. He reminded me of one of my friends from high school. Freshman year I was on the wrestling team with several seniors. I was the tiniest one. The seniors would pick me up and throw me around. It was fun, and what you’d expect from teenaged boys. They were wrestlers, so they would wrestle me, and joke around.

  A few days earlier my friend had written on my website, “Hey! I haven’t seen you in twenty years, just checking in. We’re all proud of you.” I was glad to hear from him. Considering that he had been a senior when I was a freshman, he was pretty nice to me in high school. He was a big guy too, with a shaved head. As I stood there, in front of the Grand Hyatt, in Midtown Manhattan, three days after hearing from him, I saw a guy running toward me. He had a bald head, and was a big guy. What a coincidence to see him there, I thought, and I smiled. When he reached me he picked me up and slammed me to the ground. The next thing I know, he’s sitting on top of me, yanking my arms behind my back and handcuffing me.

  At this point I knew it was not my friend from school and I figured out that despite his not wearing a badge or identifying himself as a cop, he must be one, because he had handcuffs. Despite what you may have heard about New York, I couldn’t imagine I was being robbed in broad daylight outside Grand Central. As I lay on the ground, my face pressed into the concrete, going through my head was, Oh my god, this is wrong!

  That’s when I tried to remember everything I had heard from the news about resisting arrest, though I had no idea what I was being arrested for. From all the media and news reports of tragic police incidents, I knew there were far worse things that could happen to me during a confrontation with law enforcement. I said, “I’m cooperating, whatever you say. I’m complying a hundred percent, whatever you say.” That’s when he yanked me up and walked me over to five men several feet away. Though they weren’t in uniform, I assumed they were officers because they had badges visible on their belts.

  “This is a mistake. This is an absolute mistake, you guys have the wrong person,” I said as I stood handcuffed in the middle of the sidewalk.

  “Okay,” one officer said, though he made no move to release me, and they still hadn’t told me why I was handcuffed or what they were looking for. Another officer asked for ID. I indicated that he should look in my pocket. The officer took out my driver’s license, and said, “We have witnesses that tell us that you were involved in criminal activity.”

  “Witnesses? What are you talking about?”

  “Someone said he’s been delivering things to you for the last two weeks.”

  None of this was making any sense. “I’m staying in this hotel,” I told him. “We can go up to my room. I’ll show you the plane ticket. I arrived on a red-eye flight this morning. There is no way that I could have been doing anything here for two weeks, when I just got in this morning.”

  The plainclothes officer who had tackled me and was still holding me by the arm was not very open to what I was saying. He just repeated, “We’ll see. We’ll see. We’ll figure this out. We’ll see.”

  I kept telling them, “Look, this has nothing to do with me.” I pleaded with them to look at my US Open badge in my back pocket. At this point it was hanging out. “Please, look at my badge, you can tell that I’m not a criminal. I have a badge for the US Open. I was on my way there now.”

  “Okay, we’ll see. We’ll see.”

  They still wouldn’t take the badge out. They didn’t believe me until about ten minutes later when another officer, an older man, arrived on the scene. As I watched him examine my ID I could see that he realized there was a problem. After he looked at my license and I told him that I was a professional tennis player and was heading to the Open, he took out his phone and appeared to be looking something up. Then he looked again at my ID and what must have been a picture of me on his phone. That’s when he apologized and had the other officers uncuff me. He was the only one, of the five or six officers there, who apologized. The officer who tackled me, whose
last name I later found out is Frascatore, never did.

  At that moment my car arrived and I walked away in a daze and got in. I didn’t ask for any badge numbers or their names. I didn’t ask for their precinct information. I was just relieved to be away from them. The full effect of what occurred in those fifteen minutes hadn’t yet sunk in. I was still in shock. I had not fully processed what just happened to me on a busy New York City sidewalk. I still didn’t fully realize that I’d been manhandled and handcuffed, then dragged to my feet in full view of crowds of people streaming by. And I was completely innocent. I was just relieved to be away from them and that scene and ready to forget it. I sat in the car still shaken, then called my wife, Emily, and told her what happened.

  “I just want to forget about it,” I said. “I almost can’t even believe it.”

  “What if that had happened to me?” she asked, her voice trembling with anger.

  When I thought about it, I couldn’t even imagine it.

  “You have to do something. You can’t just let it go.”

  As she spoke, her hurt and indignation for me seeped into my stunned brain. That’s when I got angry. I started to shake just thinking of my wife, a member of my family, or anyone I loved being treated the way I had just been treated. The shock was subsiding, and as my mind cleared I knew that what had taken place was wrong and I had to do something about it. But what was I going to do?

  I decided to give an interview about what happened with the press at the Open.

  That afternoon, the police department issued a statement, which wasn’t surprising since my interview had just hit the airwaves online in the media. What was surprising was the statement they issued. Although the officers on the scene admitted that something had occurred, their version of the events was very different from mine. They claimed that I was detained for less than a minute, was not manhandled, and that I was never in handcuffs. I couldn’t believe it, but it was the word of five officers against mine.

  I went down to the hotel lobby to find the head of security. I asked if there were surveillance cameras outside the hotel. He said there were. I explained what happened and we went to his office and watched the video. As I watched it play out I said to him, “The officers are claiming that I was detained for a minute and that I wasn’t tackled or handcuffed.”

  He pointed to the time at the bottom of the screen. “We have the time stamp on it. You were detained for twelve minutes. You were in cuffs for ten minutes.”

  I watched the video a second time. It was as if I needed to see it again to believe that what I knew happened had actually happened. I saw myself leaning on the building. I saw Officer Frascatore tackle me and throw me to the ground. I saw him kneeling on my back as he yanked my arms behind me and cuffed me. I saw him pull me to my feet and walk me out of view. Then I thought about their statement that none of it happened.

  I decided to go to the press, and I did an interview with Good Morning America the next day. It was important to me to tell my side of the story as it actually happened. Three days later the NYPD called a press conference, and William Bratton, the police commissioner, released a statement. This time the officers’ version of the events had changed. Their statement was now a lot closer to what had actually occurred. The police had obtained the surveillance video from the hotel not long after I viewed it, but they did not immediately release it. I found out in the statement that Officer Frascatore was put on desk duty pending an investigation.

  It should not matter that I am a tennis star, or a public figure with access to the media, to be treated respectfully and not have my rights taken for granted by law enforcement. All people, regardless of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or perceived socioeconomic standing, should know that police officers will treat them respectfully and issue an accurate and timely report of any incident or altercation between them and law enforcement.

  That I have a platform and access to the media should not make what happened to me any more significant. No one should be manhandled without due process and definitely not because of a vague likeness to someone else. Even if I were the man they were looking for, why would such excessive force be necessary if I was cooperating? This speaks to a larger issue in America, the use of excessive force by law enforcement, especially against minorities. From what we see in the media and read in the paper, it is clear that there are a few police officers in our country who think that having a badge makes them above the law.

  My grandfather, whom I was named after, was a New York police officer, and I am extremely proud of him for his service. But not all officers are like him. Officers who don’t have regard for the public they serve make it worse for the overwhelming majority of police officers who are working hard to do their jobs respectfully and sensitively, even as they put their lives on the line to protect and to serve. Those men and women are truly heroes. I know, because that’s the type of police officer my grandfather was. These officers make the streets safer; they protect us from harm, at times putting their own lives in jeopardy for ours. This is why I hold the police force in high regard.

  My wife’s words led me to realize something had to be done about it, that it wasn’t right. If I were heading off to work and it happened to me, after being released I would have had to rush to get to my job because now I would have been late. It would be a lot less likely that I would be able to figure out later who the officers on the scene were, or why they detained me. And without any video evidence, I would have no recourse. More than likely, I would just be happy to be able to walk away, even if I had to live with the humiliation of the encounter.

  When I did speak out, it was my word against theirs. The word of five police officers who all said nothing had happened. That’s what I faced before they knew about the surveillance video. Regardless of what the officers said, the video took priority, because you could see the events as they unfolded. You could see it.

  When releasing the video, the police commissioner spoke on the record and said it was a case of mistaken identity and that the suspect could have been my twin. However, the photo of the person they showed during the press conference was an Australian national who was not in the US at the time. Misinformation and a lack of reporting by the offending officers and their superiors is a second violation against victims. When you consider that the average citizen does not have the resources or the platform to fight this type of manipulation and cover-up, it is not surprising that more of these instances of excessive force or misconduct do not see the light of day.

  Before the video was released, I told some close friends about what happened. These were people who knew me, who knew that I am not one to exaggerate. Of course they were upset about it. Their responses ranged from “Aw, that’s terrible,” to “Oh, that stinks.” Once they saw the video, though, they called me back in shock. They had not realized the severity of the encounter. They did not really believe that the officer had charged me and slammed me to the ground, handcuffed and detained me, and that I was literally standing there doing nothing when it happened. Even people who know me well thought I must have been doing something to have been handled so forcefully. I have a buddy who even joked about it until he saw the video. After watching it he said that it actually made him sick to see something like that happen to a friend. Before seeing the video account, my friends didn’t believe the severity of the incident. Honestly, why would they? It seems almost unbelievable.

  I thought about all the incidents in the media of police misconduct, racial profiling, and discriminatory practices, and I wondered how many of them actually happened the way the officers reported it. How many times had officers not reported an incident at all? I wondered how many times innocent men and women managed to walk away and how many times they had not. When I think back to that day I can’t help but consider how badly it could have turned out if only a few things had gone differently.

  I was tackled, handcuffed, paraded down a crowded sidewalk, and detained for twelve minutes before the office
rs realized they had the wrong man. Officer Frascatore did not identify himself as a member of law enforcement, ask my name, read me my rights, or in any way afford me the dignity and respect due every person who walks the streets of this country. While I believe the vast majority of our police officers are dedicated public servants who conduct themselves appropriately, I know that what happened to me is sadly not uncommon. This became even more significant when I read in a 2015 New York Times article about the incident titled “Officer Who Arrested James Blake Has History of Force Complaints” that Frascatore had at least three other complaints of using excessive force.1 You have to wonder if those three reports are really forty, or a hundred, because he did not report them in the same way he had not reported mine.

  Too often in the recent past, we have watched videos of sometimes fatal encounters with the police that have sparked international outrage. One can only wonder how these victims would have been portrayed in the media without video evidence. One also wonders how many other victims exist that we will never hear about. I am sure many were not as innocent as I may have been, but I cannot imagine any of them, or really anyone, being deserving of such a level of excessive force. According to the Times article, Frascatore’s other alleged victims, who filed complaints of excessive force, claimed to have been punched either in the mouth, the stomach, or the temple. One claimed to have been thrown to the ground and pummeled. Many average citizens do not have a platform with the media, or an opportunity to uncover incidents like mine, which makes me know it is vital for me to speak up.

  Two years later the incident is still with me, and I am forever changed by it. I’ve spent some of those years wondering how to address it, the injustice of it, as it relates not only to me but to anyone who has had a run-in or altercation with law enforcement. Think of all the people who were minding their own business and then found themselves unfairly and unjustly detained, harassed, mistreated, embarrassed, victimized, or worse. I can’t imagine how many times something like a case of mistaken identity, of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or worse, a case of racial profiling or discrimination, could and has happened. I wonder how often indignities like that occur, to innocent people who do not have the means or a platform to tell their side of the story.