Oakland Police Release Names of Officers, Man Involved in Deadly Shooting

Update, 3:20 p.m. Friday: The Oakland Police Department today released the name of the man shot and killed by four officers on Sunday during a police response to a night of sideshows in East Oakland. Police also released the names of the officers involved in the shooting.

The department identified the deceased man as Richard Perkins, 39, whom police say brandished a pellet gun at the officers before they opened fire.

The officers who discharged their weapons were identified as Sgt. Joseph Turner, an OPD officer of seven years; officers Jonathan Cairo and Joshua Barnard, both of whom have been on the force for one year; and Officer Allahno Hughes, seven months with the OPD.

Update, 6:05 p.m. Monday: Oakland Police Chief Sean Whent said the four officers who shot and killed a 39-year-old man on Sunday were wearing body cameras but that the devices were switched off when the incident occurred.

Whent said the officers were doing paperwork related to impounding several motorcycles that had been involved in a sideshow near 90th and Bancroft avenues in East Oakland.

Expanding on the department's earlier account of the incident, Whent said the man approached the officers and pointed what turned out to be a replica pistol in their "general direction."

The four officers -- three rookies and a sergeant whom Whent said is a seven-year veteran on the Oakland force -- opened fire and fatally wounded the man. Whent said no words were exchanged before the shooting.

"If this is pointed at you," Whent said, referring to the replica pistol, "it would be reasonable to assume that it was a real firearm. I think the officers were shocked when they found out it was not in fact a real firearm."

Original post: Oakland police were involved Sunday evening in their fifth fatal shooting in five months, this time in what they describe as a confrontation with a man wielding a replica pistol.

In its initial statement, the department said the 5:34 p.m. shooting occurred outside a gas station at 90th and Bancroft avenues in East Oakland as uniformed officers towed vehicles that were being impounded after a sideshow.

According to the police account, the officers "were approached by a subject who pointed a firearm in their direction."

The statement continues:

At least several officers discharged their service firearm fatally striking the subject. After the subject was shot, the officers immediately performed CPR until medical personnel arrived on scene. Medical personnel arrived shortly after.

No officers were reported to be injured.

Later in the evening, the department released a picture of what it described as a "replica firearm" the dead suspect had been carrying.

The Oakland police homicide detail and Internal Affairs Division as well as the Alameda County District Attorney's Office are investigating, the department said.

Sunday evening's shooting happened as Oakland police responded to a second night of sideshows in East Oakland.

The Oakland Tribune reported that hundreds of drivers, including some from the Central Valley and Southern California, participated in sideshows late Saturday night and early Sunday morning.

At one point, as many as 200 cars took over a section of Interstate 880 near High Street. Later on -- either early Sunday or Sunday evening -- a crowd of spectators badly damaged an Oakland police patrol car. A video of the incident was posted on YouTube.

The Sunday morning sideshows reportedly ended around 4 a.m. Activity, this time involving motorcycles as well as cars, resumed sometime Sunday afternoon before the fatal police shooting at 90th and Bancroft.

Before June, the Oakland Police Department had gone more than two years without a fatal officer-involved shooting -- a run that Police Department brass and city officials alike said was one sign of improved practices in a long-troubled agency.

That period ended June 6, when officers shot and killed Demouria Hogg, a man who had been found asleep or unconscious in a car at the bottom of the Lakeshore Avenue off-ramp from westbound Interstate 580, near Lake Merritt.

Since then, officers have been involved in four other fatal shootings, including Sunday night's:

• Aug. 3: Antonio Clements, 39. Police say he was killed after he opened fire on officers who sought to take him into custody in a sexual assault case. One officer was wounded in the exchange of fire.
• Aug. 12: Nate Wilks, 28. An armed robbery suspect shot and killed after a police chase from East Oakland into West Oakland. Police say three officers opened fire after Wilks charged toward them with a pistol.
• Aug. 27: Yonas Alehegne, 30. Police say Alehegne approached an officer who was investigating an early-morning assault in which he was allegedly involved; he reportedly struck her in the head multiple times with a bicycle chain, after which she fatally wounded him.
• Nov. 15: Subject unidentified. Police say several officers fired on a man who brandished what turned out to be a replica pistol.

The four men killed before Sunday were black.