FOURSTATESHOMEPAGE

James Blake watches a return to Mardy Fish on Friday evening, Aug. 25, 2017, in the Men's Legends event at the Connecticut Open tennis tournament in New Haven, Conn. (Catherine Avalone/New Haven Register via AP)

NEW YORK (AP) Former pro tennis star James Blake testified on Tuesday that a plainclothes police officer wearing a T-shirt and jeans didn't identify himself before throwing him to the ground and handcuffing him in a mistaken arrest in 2015 outside a Manhattan hotel.

"He never said `NYPD.' He never said `officer,'" Blake said at a disciplinary trial for Officer James Frascatore. "He never said `freeze,' like you'd see in the movies."

In his own testimony Frascatore told an administrative judge that once a superior misidentified Blake as a target of a credit card fraud operation, he dashed through traffic across 42nd Street and sneaked up on Blake to keep "an element of surprise," having been warned that the suspects could be armed with knives. He said he waited to tell Blake "police don't move" as he took him down with an authorized "arm bar" maneuver.

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