Was plainclothes right assignment for offifficer?

Several police veterans fifind aspects of Raja’s approach questionable.

After a plainclothes offifficer drove up to Corey Jones’ SUV, triggering the events that led to Jones’ death, many have wondered: Should an offifficer who wasn’t in uniform have approached him to begin with?

The answer, experts say, is probably not.

Several former police offificers and administrators interviewed by The Palm Beach Post about Jones’ death questioned many aspects of the case, from offifficer Nouman Ra- ja’s decision to confront Jones to the Palm Beach Gardens Police Department’s decision to put Raja, who is still on probation with the agency, in a plainclothes job.

“An experienced plainclothes offifficer not only would have been careful when he pulled over, but he never would have pulled over to begin with,” said Chuck Drago, a former Fort Lauderdale police assistant chief. It’s just too risky.”

“He could have just gotten on the radio and asked for a uniformed offifficer,” said Joseph Giacalone, a former NYPD detective sergeant and professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the

City University of New York.

They and others said officers have to be carefully trained before working out of uniform, and even more careful when stepping from the role of plainclothes observer to active police officer.

Because they’re intentionally trying not to look like police, that transition can be confusing, and experts said they understood why Jones might not have known that Raja was an officer.

Even officers confused

Even other officers can be confused. Between 1981 and 2010, 26 officers were shot and killed by their fellow officers be- cause of mistaken identities, a New York state task force found. Many were in plain clothes, intervening in an emergency.

“I’ve had regular citizens, honest people, pull guns on me” during plainclothes work, Drago said. “They don’t know.”

Jones’ death might have been caused by that confusion.

His Hyundai sport utility vehicle broke down while driving home from a drumming gig in Jupiter, forcing him to stop at the bottom of the Interstate 95 offramp at PGA Boulevard and wait for a tow truck.

Raja was working a burglary surveillance assignment nearby. He was wearing jeans, a T-shirt and baseball cap and driving a white full-size Ford van with no police mark- ings.

For some reason — police said it was to investigate what he believed to be an abandoned vehicle — Raja, at 3:15 a.m., drove up the offramp and parked nearly in front of Jones’ SUV, blocking multiple lanes of traffic.

He got out but didn’t have his badge with him, according to Jones’ family lawyer, Benjamin Crump, immediately after he was briefed by State Attorney Dave Aronberg.

It’s unclear what Raja said to Jones, but he said he saw a gun and fired six times. Jones, 31, who had a legal concealed carry permit, never got off a shot. He ran from the scene before collapsing 80 to 100 feet away. His gun was found somewhere between his body and his SUV.

The Palm Beach County Sheriff ’s Office, which investigates officer-involved shootings for Palm Beach Gardens, has asked the FBI to assist.

Crump said he believes Jones “went to his grave” not knowing Raja was a cop, and experts said that’s possible.

“The first thing that came to my mind is that this was a misidentification on the part of the motorist,” Giacalone said. “He probably thought he was going to be robbed or something like that.”

Specialized training

Plainclothes work is an essential part of policing, allowing officers to observe their environment — and potential criminals — without the imposing presence of a uniform and police cruiser.

But it’s dangerous work. The former officers and supervisors, who were familiar with the case from national news coverage, had questions about the officer’s training, supervision and department policies.

Police usually receive some kind of training at the academy on how to perform when not in a uniform, but New York police don’t work in plain clothes before getting at least three to five days of specific training, Giacalone said.

Training includes learning how to identify yourself to people. That usually includes showing a badge and yelling “police” before brandishing a weapon, they said. If the officer has time to don some kind of temporary uniform, such as a “raid jacket” — a blue or black windbreaker with “police” written on the front and back — that’s better.

The training also includes handling critical incidents, such as when should a plainclothes officer get involved and when should they not?

Some departments have strict policies limiting when an officer can get involved in an incident. In the opinion and experience of Michael Scott, a professor at Arizona State University whose police career includes a stint as chief of the Lauderhill Police Department, the best policies direct plainclothes or off-duty officers to not intervene except in an emergency.

“In general, it sounds like that was not done, but might should have been done” in Raja’s case, Scott said.

But training is not enough.“It takes time and training and experience for officers to understand the difference when working in plain clothes,” Drago said.

In many cases, it was obvious which officers were new to plainclothes assignments, he said. They would be out of uniform but still carry themselves with authority. When the goal is not to look like a police officer, that’s a problem.

“You can even tell by the way they walked,” Drago said. “We used to joke about them coming in with the shiny black shoes. You had to kind of break them of those habits.”

‘Highly unusual’

It’s unclear what training or experience Raja had, or what policies and training the Palm Beach Gardens Police Department has on plainclothes work. The city and department did not respond to a list of questions and have not provided copies of procedure manuals.

But in general, Scott, Drago and Giacalone said they would not have put someone who was still on probation in such an important role, unless the officer had some truly exceptional experience working out of uniform. Police simply don’t know enough about an employee to take the risk.

Raja, who was hired by the department in April after seven years with Atlantis police, was still in his first year of probation, which is common for new hires. Probationary employees are far easier to fire.

“Generally speaking, to take an officer on probation and put him on plainclothes is highly unusual,” Drago said. “I don’t care what kind of expe- rience he’s had. You really don’t know what his strengths and weaknesses are.”

He suspects Raja had limited experience, based on the fact that he pursued an abandoned vehicle when he could have called dispatchers to send a uniformed officer.

Giacalone also had doubts.

“The officer does sound like he’s a little unprepared,” Giacalone said. “Why do you leave your shield (badge) in your car? You have it in your pocket or around your neck. That’s how you’re trained.”

But they also had questions about his supervision and the need for Raja to be in plain clothes at all. Giacalone said that Raja could have been assigned with another officer, as is common in New York, or had a uniformed supervisor close by.

He also doubted the need for Raja to be in plain clothes at all, when burglary surveillance is a relatively minor operation that isn’t worth the risk that accompanies non-uniform work. He simply could have been in a uniform in an unmarked car.

Nobody was surprised that this shooting has received a lot of attention.

“It’s sad that in all these cases, the communities see it as something nefarious and sinister, as opposed to what it probably is — sad, sad mistakes that result from poor training,” Drago said. “Rightfully so, we should be rising up and forcing our police leaders and legislators to improve training that police are getting today. That’s righteous.”