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Mayor Bill de Blasio called James Blake on Thursday morning to apologize for his mistaken arrest.Credit Matthew Stockman/Getty Images

It was the kind of startling episode that Mayor Bill de Blasio sought to eliminate: a black man tackled to the ground and handcuffed by police officers for an offense, it turned out, he did not commit.

The unprovoked manhandling of the international tennis star James Blake by a team of white officers outside a hotel in Midtown Manhattan on Wednesday quickly gained wide exposure. It has also renewed scrutiny of Mr. de Blasio’s ability to curb the aggressive policing that, as a Democratic candidate for mayor, he had pledged to erase.

City Hall, aware of the delicate nature of the situation, has been quick to respond. In an interview with NY1 on Thursday afternoon, Mr. de Blasio said that Mr. Blake’s arrest “shouldn’t have happened, and he shouldn’t have been treated that way.”

“I want to apologize to him on behalf of the City of New York,” the mayor told the NY1 anchor Errol Louis.

Mr. de Blasio said he called Mr. Blake on Thursday morning to apologize personally. The two did not connect, and the mayor is hoping to reach the tennis player later in the day, aides said.

The mayor’s remarks came after his police commissioner, William J. Bratton, convened a news conference on Thursday morning to announce an investigation into what he called an inappropriate arrest; one of the officers involved has been placed on modified duty, and Mr. Bratton added that he, too, had tried to reach Mr. Blake to apologize.

The tennis player, Mr. Bratton said in an interview on Wednesday evening, “has a right to be upset.”

For some, Mr. Blake’s experience has echoes of the advice that Mr. de Blasio said he gave his son, Dante, who, like Mr. Blake, is biracial, about being cautious when interacting with police officers. Like those remarks, any comments by the mayor about the Blake episode are bound to be dissected by supporters and critics alike.

Policing has been arguably the most difficult field of governance for the mayor, whose criticism of stop-and-frisk tactics galvanized political supporters but bred open resentment among the police ranks. The mayor has tried to strike a balance, empathizing with the frustrations of black and Latino New Yorkers while showing respect for work of the police.

“It’s tricky,” said Christina Greer, a political science professor at Fordham, who has urged Mr. de Blasio to move faster in reforming the Police Department. She said she hoped that Mr. de Blasio would use Mr. Blake’s situation to acknowledge that he has more work to do in reforming the police.

But Professor Greer also said she was upset by Mr. Bratton’s comments on CNN on Thursday morning, when he said flatly that “race has nothing at all to do with” Mr. Blake’s arrest. Mr. Bratton said the officers had a photograph of a suspect who “looks like the twin brother of Mr. Blake.” (Mr. Blake has played down any suggestion that he was racially profiled, although he told The Daily News on Wednesday that in his mind, “there’s probably a race factor involved.”)

Professor Greer, who is black, said those comments were akin to saying “we all look alike.” She said she believed that the mayor’s message about police reform “hadn’t trickled down.”

Councilman Brad Lander, a Democrat from Brooklyn, said he believed Mr. de Blasio had handled the situation, so far, with the right tone.

“The administration responded well here, quickly making clear the use of force was inappropriate,” Mr. Lander said on Thursday.

“But Blake’s arrest throws into sharp relief that there’s still a long way to go,” he said. “Most African-American men in New York City don’t have celebrity status to call attention to whether their arrests are appropriate or not.”