I’ve written many times about gun control, the Florida“stand your ground” law, and about racially provoked incidents. Generally, these issues have not been in our community,
but last Sunday Corey Jones’ vehicle broke down at the nearby Interstate 95
exit ramp in Palm Beach Gardens. He was
a drummer in a band and therefore routinely traveled late at night. He was
shot and killed by a police officer who emerged from an unmarked car and who was
not in uniform while Jones was waiting for a tow truck.
This has attracted national attention as potentially
another example of a contentious police action.
It is certainly at least a police indifference to an alternative
protocol which may have obviated any shooting and it is too early to rush to judgment
regarding whether it was racially provoked in any way. It seems the incident
was fundamentally a deadly cocktail of circumstances.
Corey Jones’ vehicle broke down on his way home from a
gig in Jupiter, just north of where the incident took place. He called a friend who tried to help him get
his car started around 2.00 am, but without success. He called for a tow truck and although his
brother called to offer to pick him up, he didn’t want to abandon his car
because of the valuable drums he was carrying.
So around 3.00 am as he was waiting for the tow truck, he was accosted
by Nouman Raja, a plain-clothed police officer who was driving an unmarked
vehicle with no police lights.
Corey Jones had a hand gun with a concealed weapon permit
and probably thought he was about to be robbed and perhaps when the police
officer saw the “suspect” with a gun, the ingredients were suddenly there for a
deadly confrontation. Apparently, Jones
never fired his weapon, but instead was trying to run away, his weapon being
dropped half way between his car and where he was shot (three times according
to the initial reports).
Jones was known as a law-abiding, church-going young man with
a passion for music. Only a week before he
purchased the gun legally. He was concerned about his late working hours and that
his usual compensation was in cash.
So it all possibly comes down to mistaken identity, his
not knowing that Raja was a police officer and the police officer not knowing whether
Jones was a burglary suspect (an activity for which he was on stake-out duty
nearby).
Perhaps the most significant question that needs to be
answered by the Palm Beach Gardens police is why Raja didn’t call for a marked police
car to check out the vehicle. Given incidents
in Florida involving fake police officers, bad guys who mount a red light on
their dashboards and can stop a citizen with impunity, to rob the motorist or
have an accomplice steal his car, how is one to know the legitimacy of being
stopped? If Jones had been approached by a uniformed officer from a marked police
car, it is unthinkable he would have gone for his pistol.
Particularly disturbing is the slippery slope of gun
ownership. Here is a case of merely possessing a
legitimate gun being a possible causative factor in a needless, horrifying
death of an innocent young man, a passionate musician. The more people who carry weapons, the more
gun violence, and therefore more people feel they need a gun, a vicious cycle,
intolerable in a civilized society. And it will become increasingly likely that
“mistaken identity” will involve the police use of guns.
We grieve for Corey Jones, for his family, and for our
antiquated interpretation of the 2nd amendment. And currently moving through two Florida
Senate committees is a proposal to allow Floridians with concealed weapon
permits to carry them openly in public, including on college campuses and
universities. There are about 1.4 million Floridians with permits. If this insanity becomes law, we’ll soon be
having fast draw shoot outs like in the old west, each person claiming that he
was merely “standing his ground.”
There are obviously no simple answers but given the
number of concealed weapons, many of which are carried in the glove compartments
of a car, one would think that a plain-clothed police officer in an unmarked
car should call for back up before approaching an occupied vehicle on the side
of the road late at night. It is highly likely that Corey Jones would be alive
today if that was the standard protocol.
This sad unspeakable tragedy was so unnecessary.
