OAKLAND — In recent days, police officers in the East Bay have been presented with a unique and dangerous challenge: people keep trying to kill them.
Over the past 16 days, patrol cops in Oakland and San Leandro have been shot at four times, resulting in one officer being wounded and others narrowly avoiding injury. In San Leandro, a man allegedly fired at three police officers who returned fire, then later claimed he was doing so because he wanted the cops to shoot him, according to court records.
In three of the four incidents, the officers returned fire, bringing the total number of East Bay police shootings this month to five. That’s because in Contra Costa, officers in Richmond and Concord killed people in separate incidents — a Concord man shot by police while allegedly stabbing a family member, and a Richmond man who allegedly charged at police while holding a sheath that the officers reportedly believed was a knife, authorities said.
The Contra Costa incidents mean that 2025 has seen more fatal police shootings in the county than there were in all of 2024. In fact, 2024 saw two fatal incidents involving officers — the suicide of a man arrested on suspicion of a child sex crime, and a police chase involving a teen who veered off a freeway onramp and crashed after police discontinued the pursuit.
In Alameda County, the string of attempted police killings started Feb. 10, when a man identified as Robert Blackwell allegedly shot up Oakland police Officer Khatanbaatar Batzorig’s patrol car, as Batzorig was responding to another call. The patrol car, but not Batzorig, was struck by gunfire.
When police identified Blackwell later that day, they realized that in 2015 he’d been charged in a near-identical incident and served a prison sentence for it. In that case, Blackwell and another person, allegedly pointed guns at an Oakland police officer who was working undercover, then shot at a patrol cop who showed up to assist the undercover officer.
Next, on Feb. 16, a group of police officers in San Leandro showed up to a Walmart there for a report of a man attempting to ram his children and their mother with a car during a custody exchange.
What they found was an “irate” Reynaldo Melendez-Espinoz — a man with a prior domestic violence case involving a child’s mother — who allegedly pulled a gun and fired at officers Blake Staniford, Quinton May and Austin Lovel. Officers returned fire, but no one — not Melendez-Espinoz, nor any police — were wounded. He later told authorities he was hoping they would shoot him, according to court records.
Finally, this week police in Oakland exchanged gunfire with two people in two incidents within a 24-hour span. The first came just after midnight on Feb. 24, when an Oakland Housing Authority officer and a still-unidentified suspect were shot during a gun battle on 85th Avenue. Both the suspect and the officer were hospitalized in stable condition, authorities said.
Finally, at around 4 p.m. on Feb. 24, two Oakland Police Department cops whose names have not yet been released allegedly exchanged gunfire with 29-year-old Francisco Perez. He was booked into jail on attempted murder and assault charges but as of Wednesday morning he had not been charged.