City ‘Moving Forward’ After NYPD Mistakenly Tackles James Blake: Mayor
(DNAINFO) Jeff Mays — “It was very quickly apparent that he was a total innocent if you will in this matter and warranted an apology both from me as chief of the police department and the mayor,” Bratton said of Blake.
“As has been my practice if I think that there’s been inappropriate behavior as the investigation begins, I will place the officer in a variety of forms that we can do: suspension, modification, desk duty. That investigation, as it goes forward will take a look at the veracity of what occurred,” the commissioner added.
Asked about Blake’s statement that the swift apologies from Bratton and de Blasio may have been part of “extending courtesy to a public figure mistreated by the police,” de Blasio, who ran on a platform of improving relations between police and minority communities, talked about pre-existing efforts to retrain police in use of force.
“This is one incident but really what matters here is the major policy changes, the major resources we are putting into reform in this department. The retraining is being done on a level that’s never been seen previously in this city and I commend the commissioner for his vision of how to help this department to a better place,” said de Blasio.