The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Blake sees a more promising hope in these peaceful protests
His emotions, like his memories, have come in waves the past week. Like the rest of us, James Blake saw the video of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin methodically, pitilessly take the life from George Floyd. Like few white Americans — and too many black Americans — Blake has been there. The former No. 4-ranked tennis player in the world, the man from Fairfield who has called himself “the accidental activist,” knows there was nothing accidental about what he saw on a video that could change America.
“My reactions have changed so much over a week, but my first was just despair,” Blake said from his home in San Diego. “It was really tragic. You think about the family, the people close to George Floyd and how senseless this was.
“Later that night, I began thinking more and more about what happened to me and how it could have been a lot worse and how tragically that could have ended. As I went to bed that night I felt this awful sadness. I felt like this is another case that was going to be forgotten in a day or two. It’ll take the attention away from Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, the attention away from the altercation at Central Park. Three days from now, we’ll have something different that will take the place of this and it really saddened to me to think how quickly people get over a life lost, because that destroys the family, destroys the community.”
Blake woke up during the night, his mind racing about George Floyd, and about how during the 2015 U.S. Open he was standing in front of a Manhattan hotel when a man came running up to him. Blake expected him to be an exuberant tennis fan. It was an undercover cop. He tackled Blake to the pavement and handcuffed him as a suspect in a credit card scheme.
It turned out to be a case of mistaken identity. Or was it? The Harvard-educated Blake is black. So was the suspect.
“The next day changed me,” he said. “I saw people protest and people make such a big deal of it. At the beginning when the protests were all peaceful and efforts to make change for justice and for George Floyd, I was extremely
encouraged. It showed me America hadn’t become so numb, so desensitized to this issue that they still care when it’s on video, when it’s so egregious, so blatantly obvious this man wasn’t a threat.
“George Floyd was unarmed. He was on the ground. He was handcuffed. There was nothing he could do. Four officers were on the scene and he still lost his life. This is not where we want to be. This is not fair. People stood up. I was really encouraged. People still cared. Of course, it changed after that.”
Windows were smashed. Businesses, small and large, were looted. Fires across America were set.
“The protest was somewhat hijacked by looters, rioters, people who just wanted to wreak havoc,” Blake said. “They wanted to go out and damage buildings, light things on fire. That’s not productive. If anything, it muddies the water. My guess is that is their intention, muddying the waters, stifling the sound of the minorities.
“Actually, it’s more than that. There are a lot of white men and women who are standing with the minorities who have been screaming so long.
“That’s what makes it more powerful. We have the support of so many others who see this injustice and say it’s wrong even if it doesn’t affect them directly. I was happy about it, but so many outside sources ... On the right, they’re calling it antifa. On the left, they’re calling it white supremacists. My guess is it’s some mixture of both looking to cause chaos and benefit from it. That saddened me, but I’m still overall encouraged by the reaction that we’re not entirely numb. That says something.”
We aren’t entirely numb. It is a starting point to try to end something that has gone on far too long. In a terrific piece for the Los Angeles Times, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar wrote that if you’re white your first reaction to the video probably was “Oh my God” and shaking your head at the injustice. While if you’re black, you probably leapt to
your feet, cursed and threw something.
“It’s our replay,” Blake said. “We see it over and over and over again. We’ve been screaming about this. Yeah, we’re angry. We’ve been angry. To see it again, to know what happened to me, definitely angers us. To know that most times cops get away with this. That’s part of the anger. The cop who did it to me basically got away with it. The cops who did it to Philando Castile, Alton Sterling and Eric Garner basically got away with it.
“It’s one thing that they got away with it in the ’80s and ’90s. It was the cop’s word against the criminal’s word. That’s the way they’d frame it: ‘He was resisting arrest. I feared for my life.’ What they needed to say to get away with it. Now that there is video, they should be more accountable. In this case, hopefully they are. Without the video and without the protesting I don’t think there’d be any chance that Officer Chauvin would be charged. He may not have even been fired. The protests actually do make a difference.”
Blake said something for the impatient to consider:
“For all four officers to be fired immediately and have charges brought up against (Chauvin) in three days, I know some people say, ‘Oh, that took long.’ After knowing what I know about my case, that it took two years to get the guy who did it to me to lose five vacation days? Three days to me is impressive. I don’t know if it would’ve been possible without the protesters.
“Without that video it’s the cops’ word against the deceased. Even the bystanders, they’ll say they didn’t have the whole context. But you’ve got the video. You know that man had his knee on his neck for over eight minutes and George Floyd was doing nothing to resist for that time. The only thing he was doing was claiming he couldn’t breathe and calling for his mother, calling out for help and not getting any. Tough to spin it when you’ve got video that clear.”
Blake said he read something the other day: Revolt usually stems from revolting behavior. He said he totally understands the anger. He is angry.
“I’m not going to argue with anyone that is upset, that is enraged,” Blake said. “There was a revolting tragedy and people are revolting against that. I’m not going to condone it, but I understand immediate reaction. Five days, six days, the ones who are causing harm, breaking windows, lighting fires, it’s tough for me for me believe this is visceral reaction to the crime. They’ve seen the video hundreds of times. They’ve had time to process. They’ve seen peaceful protesters that have kneeled with police officers, that are genuinely asking for change and what needs to take place to be accountable.
“Six days later, the need to burn a building? That doesn’t sit with me, nor is it the path forward. I don’t think it’s progress when you’re burning things down. I truly believe those people aren’t looking to push things forward, I think they’re looking to take things back and make it so the people protesting are drowned out, losing their message, and if they want they can put it on Fox News and all they’re doing is commenting on a riot instead of condemning the behavior that began the protest — the senseless killing of George Floyd.”
I had a similar conversation with Blake a few years ago. He has put considerable thought into solutions. He continues to talk about testing and training and an independent group to prosecute wrongdoing by the police.
“I’m a fan of increasing the pay of the police,” Blake said. “The cops who do the job the right way are brave. They have a lot of difficult situations every single day. Increase the pay, more intense testing, psychological testing, get it so it is more difficult to become a cop. You have a higher standard to get there. Hopefully, the ones that get there will be so proud to be police officers that they’re not going to let one of these bad actors sully the badge and make it worse for the others out there by abusing their power.
“A huge aspect to this would be to have an entirely independent counsel, an entire body that is there to provide accountability. Not tied in with the police
union, not tied in with the government. An independent unit that could prosecute these cases that doesn’t have the past precedent set by the police officers, that can find the evidence without being tied to politicians looking to curry favor with unions or anything like that. This is their job. They’re prosecutors. They prosecute the police.”
He looks back at his case. He didn’t understand why after all the public apologies, the uproar, the cop’s punishment was five days’ vacation pay.
“Where’s the precedence?” Blake said. “It came from when police police themselves. Of course, they’re going to be more lenient. I asked for him to be fired. They said they couldn’t do that because it’s too far out of the norm and it’ll look like we’re giving you too much preference. The union will be up in arms. They’ll never go for it. So forget that. Start over. Let’s be realistic about these crimes police officers commit. They are human beings. They still commit crimes. Let’s have someone investigate them as if they don’t have that badge and hold them to the standard they need to be held. Because right now, they’re really not.
“I was tackled by someone who had it in his mind there would be conflict that day whether I wanted it or not. He tackled me before asking me for an ID. This wasn’t for a crime in progress or a violent crime. This was for someone supposedly using fake credit cards. If that’s your attitude, maybe you shouldn’t be a cop. Ask for ID, use the fact they have backup, resort to force when entirely necessary. That’ll mean more trust between the community and the officer and hopefully make their job easier in the long run. They’ve got a huge responsibility.”
Blake has daughters aged 6 and 7. He hasn’t shown them the video of him being taken down that day in 2015. They’re not ready to understand it all yet.
Wouldn’t it be something wonderful if he shows them one day and says, “That’s the way it used to be.”