OAKLAND — An East Oakland woman filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday against the city of Oakland, its police department and an officer, saying that authorities were negligent in dealing with a neighbor’s racial animus and repeated violent incidents before he was fatally shot by officers in 2017.
The suit, filed by attorneys at San Francisco’s Hersh & Hersh law firm in U.S. district court, seeks a jury trial and alleges that “policies, practices and customs of the Oakland police department” violated her and her son’s civil rights, leaving her next-door neighbor Jesse Enjaian armed, angered and able to confront them and other African-American neighbors.
Oakland police responded Feb. 17, 2017, to reports of a man shooting a rifle with a scope at nearby buildings outside his Las Vegas Avenue home. When he began shooting at officers who had arrived, one shot back, hitting him. The man, later identified as Enjaian, managed to flee the area on foot, sparking an hour-long manhunt, but was later detained and taken to a hospital, where he died.
In a complaint filed Wednesday, Enjaian’s neighbor Andrea Jones said he was “mentally ill and unstable, paranoid and not taking his prescribed medication, possessed firearms on the premises, and was prone to violence and violent outbursts against his Las Vegas Avenue neighbors.”
Jones said Enjaian severely damaged a parked vehicle, shooting out its windows and puncturing its rear tires with a knife, outside her home around 10:30 p.m. a week before the Feb. 17, 2017 incident. When its driver, an African-American man, found his vehicle an hour later, he called police. Four officers responded, recovering casings and speaking with Jones, who identified her neighbor as the likely suspect. When Enjaian refused to leave his home or speak to officers, they left.
Jones called police again around 9 a.m. the next day, and spoke with two officers who arrived and went to speak with Enjaian; he told them to get off his property. Those officers left, but by then, Jones said, she was fearful of possible revenge, and kept her young son from playing outside.
Two days later, around 6:30 p.m., Jones heard noises coming from outside her home and went to her front door, where she saw Enjaian standing outside “wearing safety glasses and ear muffs and firing a long wooden handled rifle aimed at oncoming traffic.” She ran inside, fearing for her life, but did not immediately contact police.
Around 7:45 a.m. Feb. 14, Jones heard more noises and managed to see Enjaian shooting at another parked vehicle. Its owner, Patrick Reddic, managed to get out and at first headed toward Enjaian to beg for help, not realizing that Enjaian was the shooter. But Enjaian yelled a racial slur at the man before admitting he was the one who had shot at the car. When police responded to the incident, they detained Reddic.
“The Officers were aware of the fact that Jesse Enjaian was the shooter, and aware of the statements he made to Mr. Reddic,” Jones said. “However, the Oakland Police Officers failed to investigate, question, detain or arrest Jesse Enjaian or remove his firearms from the premises.”
Reddic briefly retained prominent civil-rights attorney John Burris while weighing a lawsuit against the city.
After reporting the Feb. 13 and 14 incidents to police, Jones met Feb. 15 with Oakland police Officer Harold Castro, who she said had been assigned to investigate the prior shooting incidents.
When she told him she feared for her and her son’s life, she said he advised her to contact a security company to install surveillance cameras. Castro told her police were going to get a warrant and led her to believe Enjaian’s arrest was imminent.
The cameras were installed and turned on around noon on Feb. 16. Jones saw Enjaian in his back yard and called Castro, surprised that an arrest had not yet been made. He again assured her an arrest was imminent.
The next day, around 9 a.m., Jones awoke to sounds of shooting. She managed to grab her son and hide under a bed while Enjaian shot up her home and her vehicle before police responded to confront him.
In her complaint, Jones said she met with city and police representatives at her home March 2, 2017, to discuss the shootings, and that Oakland police Chief Anne E. Kirkpatrick said officers “dropped the ball” and that “mistakes were made,” and would re-assess departmental policies and procedures.
Jones said she spoke again Feb. 6, 2018, to Kirkpatrick, who told her the city and the police department would “make changes.”
Oakland police declined to comment on the suit or the status of any related internal-affairs investigations Wednesday night, referring a reporter to the Oakland city attorney’s office. A representative for that office said they had not yet been served with the suit.
Charles Kelly, one of the attorneys who filed the complaint, declined to comment Thursday morning.
Contact George Kelly at 408-859-5180.