The ex-tennis star tackled to the ground by an NYPD officer in a case of mistaken identity wants the cop fired — and a meeting with department brass.
“I don’t think he deserves to have a badge,” James Blake said of Officer James Frascatore, who body-slammed the athlete outside a Midtown hotel last week during a fraud takedown.
“I hope he can never do that to anyone else and get away with it,” Blake told The Post on Saturday. “I hope he can never do that again under the shield of the New York Police Department.”
Commissioner Bill Bratton and Mayor de Blasio apologized to him personally last week, but Blake, 35, wasn’t satisfied.
“There’s got to be more. That can’t be the end. It can’t be an apology and then we move on our way,” he said. “We need to do something about this never happening again, because the more I think about it, the more I get frustrated this could happen to someone I care about, not just me.
“I would welcome a meeting with the commissioner, with the mayor, with whoever else feels the need to speak about this. I would love to learn what their plan is.”
A relative of the cop slammed Blake’s demands as “absurd.”
“James Blake should try to be a police officer and worry if he is going to be shot every day and see how he does his job,” the fuming family member told The Post. “He should accept the apology and move on.”
She said Frascatore — who has been placed on desk duty — is “being railroaded . . . because of the current state of police and race relations. But he didn’t arrest Blake because of his race, which the commissioner made clear to everyone. If James Blake was a regular citizen, this wouldn’t be happening.”
Blake has insisted the case is about excessive force, not race.
Frascatore, 38, who’s faced multiple civilian complaints and excessive-force lawsuits, has been stripped of his badge and gun pending an investigation.
The officer “followed protocol” when arresting Blake, and other cops described the takedown as “textbook,” the relative said.
“At least two of the complaints against him were unsubstantiated,” the relative said. “In one case, he proved he wasn’t even present. He’s a good cop and a good person, and people should know that.”
The body slam happened at the Grand Hyatt hotel Wednesday as Blake — once ranked tennis’ No. 4 in the world — leaned against a column near the entrance waiting for a ride to the US Open.
“Standing outside a nice hotel at noon in the middle of New York City, it didn’t come into my realm of possibility . . . of what was going to happen,” he told The Post.
Frascatore was investigating a credit-card scam when a tipster misidentified Blake as a suspect. A videotape of the takedown shows the officer rushing Blake, shoving him against a glass door and spinning him around as he wrestles the former pro to the ground.
The cop claims he identified himself to Blake, yelling, “Police! Don’t move!” as he approached the Harvard-educated athlete, sources said. But Blake insists the officer is lying.
“I don’t think this is his first time,” he said. “I don’t think this is one error in judgment.”
Frascatore couldn’t be reached.
Gov. Cuomo called the incident “very unfortunate” and said “that shouldn’t happen in this state.”
“I’ll leave it to the NYPD to come up with the appropriate discipline,” he said. “There is no doubt that Mr. Blake was wrongly treated.”
Blake says he has the “utmost respect” for the NYPD.
“I think they should be considered heroes. But I don’t think the person who did this to me belongs in the same sentence as them.”
Additional reporting by Taylor Vecsey and Adelaide Turton