I had just checked into the Hotel Deauville in New York City, when I heard a knock on my door. I was an advertising art director for Famous-Barr department store and had flown in from St. Louis to oversee a fashion photo shoot. On occasion, other art directors were in the city at the same time, but this was not one of the times. Curious, I opened the door to two New York City police department detectives.
It was the mid-90s, and art directors were responsible for overseeing fashion photo shoots for the sale catalogs we designed. This took me to the city up to six times a year. The company paid our expenses for this travel, and gave us a per diem for hotel, food and transportation. NYC is an expensive place and our per diem was not generous, so we looked for ways to stretch the money. One way was to find a cheaper hotel, which is how I came to stay at the Hotel Deauville.
The detectives — one male, one female — wanted to speak to me. They had a picture of a man they were looking for and told me that someone checking into the hotel had called to report having seen the fugitive. I looked at the picture as the detectives asked me questions. The male detective looked at the picture, then at me, and seemed to lose interest in the exercise; the female detective appeared to be determined to ignore a salient fact: I looked nothing like the man in the photo.
The female detective directed sharp questions to me: Why was I in town, for whom and how often? What time did my flight arrive and when did I check in? I answered the questions without concern but with more than a little curiosity. I had never before been interviewed by the police, and I was slightly amused to see the effort that one of the two officers was investing in the questioning considering that it was obvious that I was not be the person they were looking for. Shortly after they left, my phone rang; I answered to hear the manager apologizing to me.
Emily had always been friendly, helpful and welcoming, but was fearful when she directed the two detectives to my room. “I told them that it could not be you,” she said, almost tearfully, “that you were a good customer.” I thanked her for her concern and assured her that I was not upset. It was later in the week that I would learn that the NYPD was looking for someone dubbed in the media as the “Eastside Rapist.” The artists’ renderings of the suspect were so far from my appearance that I wondered how the person at the hotel who had reported me could have made such a gross mistake, and why the police department’s representatives in my room that night would refuse to admit the error and suspend the interview.
I’ve given that moment some casual thought over the years, and I have an opinion about the forces at play in the interaction but I’ve not dwelled on some of the alternative outcomes. But I gave that NYC moment more thought when I saw a news report, accompanied by video, of an undercover officer tackling tennis pro James Blake outside of a hotel. The violent takedown and handcuffing of the wrong person, whose identity was easily verifiable, was because the officer thought he was apprehending someone wanted for — and I cannot put too fine a point on this — credit card fraud.
I may be lucky to be alive.