Retired tennis star James Blake (photo, left) 
wants the plainclothes cop who tackled him from behind, threw him to the ground, and handcuffed him to lose his job and never be a cop again.
Patrick Lynch, the notorious head of New York City’s biggest police union, defended the cop by saying, “”The apprehension was made under fluid circumstances where the subject might have fled and the officer did a professional job of bringing the individual to the ground to prevent that occurrence.” He also complained about the cop being assigned to desk duty pending an investigation. That’s silly; the reassignment isn’t punishment, it’s simply an administration action to protect the public from exposure to an officer whose actions have been called into question while the facts are being determined.
Of course, we have to keep in mind that police unions serve the selfish interests of their members, not the public interest. In most cases, that means the relationship between police unions and the general public is adversarial.
This situation is nuanced. This isn’t a case of racial profiling or “stop and frisk,” NYPD’s controversial policy of combating street crime by randomly treating civilians like criminals. (Proponents argue it reduces crime; I would argue it’s what the Founding Fathers tried to protect us from when they wrote the Bill of Rights.) Blake wasn’t randomly tackled; his arrest was the product of a police sting operation gone awry and a bad witness identification. The police on the scene didn’t identify themselves as law enforcement, and the cop who tackled Blake has previously been the subject of multiple civil rights lawsuits and citizens complaints for, among other things, failing to identify himself as a cop.
So there are several issues here: Policing policy, police tactics, and what to do about cops who screw up their jobs and/or don’t follow proper policies and procedures. The latter should be a no-brainer; in most workplaces, employees who make mistakes that cost the company lots of money because they didn’t follow company policies and instructions get fired.
But in police work, where the stakes are far higher and affect us all, police managements and unions in most cases protect these rogue cops and shield them from consequences. The net result of that is America’s police have become a law unto themselves, accountable to no one, and given this free hand they all too often abuse and even murder ordinary law-abiding citizens. That’s gotta change.
I agree with Blake. Yes, this cop should be fired. Blake has a constitutional right to go about his lawful business without being assaulted and arrested. The cop, James Frascatore, doesn’t have a constitutional right to wear a badge.