Former tennis star James Blake, who holds 10 singles titles and retired in 2013 after 14 years playing professionally, told a reporter for the New York Daily News that he was mistakenly confronted and thrown to the ground by “five plainclothes city cops” hours before attending the U.S. Open on Wednesday.
The officers, who were white, apparently thought Blake was a suspect in an identity theft scam that often operated around the midtown Manhattan hotel, the Daily News reported.
Blake declined to comment further on the incident Thursday when reached by BuzzFeed News, but confirmed that details in the Daily News report attributed to him were correct.