Above: Surveillance Video of James Blake Arrest
#RiseUpOctober Squad to Serve People’s Arrest Warrants for NYPD Officer James Frascatore & NYPD Police Commissioner William Bratton |
When: Wednesday, September 16, 3:00 pm On September 9, NYPD Officer James Frascatore ran up and body slammed James Blake, a Black man, to the ground. People everywhere have seen the surveillance video. Frascatore, in plain clothes, never identified himself as an NYPD officer. He made no effort to talk to James Blake before rushing him and slamming him to the ground. After Mr. Blake was brutalized, the police released him, saying they had the “wrong person.” But then NYPD Commissioner William Bratton defended Frascatore, saying that Mr. Blake “looked like the twin brother” of the suspect the police were seeking. Bratton went on to say that in the attack on Mr. Blake, “Race had nothing to do with it.” Despite a record of previous unjustified assaults, Officer Frascatore has not been discipliined, and despite calls by Mr. Blake and many others that he be fired, he is on paid desk duty. Travis Morales of the Stop Mass Incarceration Network, stated, “Mr. Blake could easily have ended up dead like Michael Brown or Eric Garner with the police claiming, ‘we feared for our lives’ and walking free. No, Mr. Bratton, race had everything to do with this brutality as it had so many thousands of times at the hands of your police that beat and murder Black and latino people with impunity.” A delegation of organizers for #RiseUpOctober, a mass mobilization to STOP Police Terror October 22-24, will serve a People’s Arrest Warrant for NYPD Officer James Frascatore for:  Count 1 – Felonious Assault and Battery on September 9, 2015 on James Blake A People’s Arrest Warrant will be served for NYPD Commissioner William Bratton for: Count 1 – Harboring a Felonious Criminal, James Frascatore This People’s Warrant is being served on behalf of ALL the victims known and unknown of Officer Frascatore and the NYPD. Morales went on to say, “The brutality perpetrated against Mr. Blake is the very brutality that Black people suffer at the hands of the police everyday in New York and across the country. This is why thousands of people from New New York and around the country will fill the streets of New York on October 24 for ‘#RiseUpOctober – Stop Police Terror! Which Side Are You On?. They will draw a line sharply in society. There is no middle ground. There is no neutrality. Either you stand with the victims of police brutality and murder and those trying to stop it or you stand with this brutality and murder at the hands of the police.” |
