Instead, officers at the Grand Hyatt Hotel on East 42nd Street arrested two men, both British citizens who were in New York on student visas. During the episode, a plainclothes officer also slammed another man to the ground. It turned out he was not involved in the scheme. Rather, he was James Blake, a retired professional tennis player in the city for the United States Open.
The highly publicized instance of mistaken identity — which led to public apologies from city leaders and put the police officer who detained him on desk duty — has also highlighted, however accidentally, the New York Police Department’s considerable efforts to thwart the growing issue of credit card fraud.
