Oakland police officers fatally shot a man armed with knives fastened to long poles roughly 90 seconds after most responding officers arrived, newly released body-camera footage shows. An officer fired a final shot after the man had fallen face-first onto the pavement.
The city released footage of the mid-July shooting Wednesday, almost exactly a month after the encounter, which marked the third shooting involving Oakland police this year and at least the seventh since 2023. Two of this year’s three police shootings have been fatal.
Police tentatively identified the man as Jose Angel Castillo, born in November 1982, though the Alameda County coroner’s office has not confirmed his identity. Oakland police asked for the public’s help locating his next of kin.
On Thursday, police accountability advocates said the shooting added to concerns about the Oakland Police Department’s readiness to exit more than two decades of federal court oversight, which began in 2003 amid the Riders police brutality scandal. A federal judge earlier this year suggested the city could shed that oversight at an upcoming hearing in September.
The advocates specifically raised concerns about the distance between the officers and Castillo when they shot him, about two parking spaces, as well as the apparent lack of mental health experts at the scene to help deescalate the situation.
The officers “don’t attempt to deescalate the situation at all — it’s very grim to see,” said Romaine Charite, chair of the impacted families committee of Oakland Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression. The man was “clearly in distress, clearly scared the entire time and all the officers do is point a gun into his face.”
The Oakland Police Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on those criticisms.
The encounter began around 2 p.m. July 13, when California Highway Patrol officers asked Oakland police for help with a man they encountered at a homeless encampment off 42nd Avenue near San Leandro Street, along an embankment overlooking State Route 185.
Video snippets captured by two Highway Patrol officers’ cameras showed the man initially standing at the encampment while holding a hammer and two nearly identical homemade weapons, each made with a knife affixed to the end of a pole.
The man, wearing blue jeans, a black T-shirt and a pink hat, initially dropped the hammer when told to do so. But he refused their orders to also drop the bladed weapons, instead waving and pointing with them and, at one point, slinging them over his shoulders.
The Oakland Police Department released video Wednesday of a fatal police shooting on July 13, 2026, on the 4000 block of International Boulevard. (Frame from video courtesy of Oakland Police Department)
The Highway Patrol’s video snippet ended with the man still holding the blades and ambling down an embankment to the highway while an officer pointed a gun at him.
“We’ve got a subject holding two knives, one at gunpoint,” one of the Highway Patrol officers said over his radio. Around that time, someone with the Highway Patrol asked an Oakland police dispatcher for backup, saying the man was being “aggressive.”
Additional body-camera footage depicted an encounter that lasted less than 90 seconds from when most Oakland officers arrived until the man was shot.
One officer immediately drew his gun while confronting the man at East 12th Street and 41st Avenue, repeatedly ordering him to “Drop the knife! Drop the knife!”
The man, holding one bladed weapon in each hand, responded by walking down 41st Avenue away from a growing group of officers, which quickly swelled from just a couple to at least 10. At one point, three people on the sidewalk could be seen scrambling away as the man and the officers approached them.
The group included at least two plainclothes officers wearing bulletproof vests who arrived in an unmarked car shortly before the shooting.
About a minute after most Oakland officers arrived, the man backed into the parking lot of a strip mall near International Boulevard and appeared to adjust the weapons and a black backpack he had been carrying.
Around that time, multiple officers fired stun guns, with the sound of the electrical discharge lasting about four or five seconds.
The man then took a step toward officers and swung one of the bladed weapons in their direction while about two parking spaces away. At that point, an initial volley of at least seven gunshots could be heard, and the man could be seen collapsing face-first onto the pavement. After a pause of one or two seconds, an officer fired another shot as the man lay on the ground.
The Oakland Police Department released video Wednesday of a fatal police shooting on July 13, 2026, on the 4000 block of International Boulevard. (Frame from video courtesy of Oakland Police Department)
The man lay face down for about 40 seconds before officers approached, handcuffed him and flipped him over to begin lifesaving efforts.
In a narrated video compilation accompanying the raw body-camera footage, the Oakland Police Department said two of its officers fired their guns during the encounter. The department also said at least one Oakland officer and at least one Highway Patrol officer fired stun guns at the man. No officers were injured.
Oakland police listed three officers as involved in the shooting: Michael Camacho, Patrick Airoso and Nathaniel Laursen. The agency did not respond to a follow-up question about which officers fired their guns.
The California Highway Patrol has not released unedited footage from its officers during the encounter.
The shooting marked the third time Oakland police shot someone in less than three months. On May 8, police shot a man suspected of dragging one officer and pinning another against a parked vehicle while fleeing a traffic stop in the 1200 block of Ninth Avenue in city’s Eastlake district.
Less than two weeks earlier, on April 27, Oakland police fatally shot a man after department leaders said he pointed a gun at officers in the 1800 block of 89th Avenue.
Before those shootings, an Oakland police sergeant shot and wounded a man who had been firing a rifle in the 6600 block of MacArthur Boulevard in January 2025. Oakland officers fatally shot a man wanted in a Sacramento homicide who allegedly was armed with a pistol in the 1000 block of 16th Street in April 2024.
In November 2023, a police sergeant fatally shot a man near 16th Street and San Pablo Avenue after the man allegedly fired at him. An officer shot and wounded an armed carjacking suspect near 105th Avenue and International Boulevard in February 2023.
Cat Brooks, executive director of the Anti Police-Terror Project, said the frequency of those shootings raises numerous red flags. During the most recent shooting, the man appeared to be in a mental health crisis and “clearly is not sharing our reality,” she said.
“And so that was the moment where there should have been a call to a mobile mental health crisis response team — that was the moment when the badges and the guns should have said we’re actually not qualified to deal with this,” Brooks said. “They could have talked to him like a human being, instead of barking commands at him.”
Jakob Rodgers is a senior breaking news reporter. Call, text or send him an encrypted message via Signal at 510-390-2351, or email him at jrodgers@bayareanewsgroup.com.