Cop Who Tackled Tennis Pro Lost 5 Vacation Days: Report

MIDTOWN MANHATTAN, NY — A police officer who tackled former tennis pro James Blake to the ground outside of a Midtown Hotel only received half of his recommended punishment, according to reports.

Officer James Frascatore was only docked 5 vacation days for slamming Blake to the ground near the entrance of the Grand Hyatt New York hotel on East 42nd Street, the Daily News first reported. The Civilian Complaint Review Board initially recommended a punishment of 10 lost vacation days after Frascatore was found guilty of excessive force in a departmental trial, according to the report.

Blake likened the punishment to a slap on the wrist and said it's "indicative of a broken disciplinary system" in a statement released Friday.

"Losing a few vacation days for the use of excessive force, following a history of repeated civilian complaints, is not meaningful discipline," Blake said in a statement. "It is this continued failure of the NYPD’s disciplinary system that perpetuates police abuses, brutality and misconduct, and leads to the unjust killings of civilians."

Blake had previously disagreed with the recommended loss of 10 vacation days and instead claimed Frascatore should be fired. NYPD officials said in 2015 that the tennis star had been mistaken for a man wanted in connection with an identity-theft ring. Then-NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton and Mayor Bill de Blasio personally apologized to Blake when the arrest was first publicized.

In 2017, Frascatore sued Blake, New York City, the NYPD, the Civilian Complaint Review Board and HarperCollins Publishers — which published Blake's book "Ways of Grace: Stories of Activism, Adversity, and How Sports Can Bring Us Together" — for defamation, civil rights abuses and denying Frascatore due process, according to his lawyer Peter Brill.

A claim based on racial discrimination was filed not because Frascatore was discriminated against for being white but because he was improperly labeled a racist, Brill said.

Photo courtesy NYPD