ABC News(NEW YORK) — The NYPD officer who tackled former tennis star James Blake outside a Midtown hotel in September 2015 was docked five vacation days as punishment.
Blake’s lawyer Kevin Marino called it “woefully inadequate.”
“Losing a few vacation days for the use of excessive force, following a history of repeated civilian complaints, is not meaningful discipline,” Marino said, referring to the officer, James Frascatore. “Far from serving as a deterrent, a trivial penalty of this type would seem to be encouraging those inclined toward excessive force to go right on doing it. You could not draw another message from this other than it is not being taken seriously.”
Blake, who is currently in France as part of a broadcast team covering the French Open, sent the following statement:
“The lack of meaningful discipline for the NYPD officer found guilty of using excessive force against me, while I was simply waiting outside of my hotel, is indicative of a broken disciplinary system. Officer Frascatore had a record of misconduct complaints for the abusive treatment of civilians before he body-slammed me,” he said, saying Frascatore had five civilian complaints within seven months in 2013.
“Losing a few vacation days for the use of excessive force, following a history of repeated civilian complaints, is not meaningful discipline,” he added. “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. Until the de Blasio administration addresses the dysfunction in police accountability and transparency, the problems of abusive policing will remain.”
A call to the attorney for Officer James Frascatore was not returned.
The NYPD provided the following statement:
“Following the public disciplinary trial of Police Officer James Frascatore, the Police Commissioner finalized the case, consistent with the findings and recommendations of the Trial’s Commissioner,” the statement read. “The NYPD is precluded from providing disciplinary records because of the strict limitations created by State Civil Rights law 50-a.
“The NYPD and Police Commissioner have continually and forcefully called for changing the State Civil Rights law, which explicitly prohibits the release of disciplinary records of uniform state and city agencies,” the statement continued.
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