Residents living near Manzanita Park in East Oakland were told to shelter in place yesterday after a shootout inside the park escalated into an armed standoff with police in the surrounding neighborhood. Officers converged on the area around 22nd Avenue and East 28th Street, urging anyone nearby to stay indoors while they searched for an armed suspect.
The Oakland Police Department first alerted the public around 1:54 PM. Pacific time Sunday, writing on X that residents near Manzanita Park were asked to shelter in place due to an armed suspect in the area, and that officers were actively searching for that suspect. The department told residents to remain indoors and avoid the area until further notice, according to the Oakland Police Dept. post. As reported by CBS News, the shelter-in-place order stemmed from an initial shootout inside the park itself, which then developed into an armed standoff with officers in the blocks around it.
Residents near Manzanita Park, in the area of 22nd Avenue and East 28th Street, are asked to shelter in place at this time due to an armed suspect in the area.
— Oakland Police Dept. (@oaklandpoliceca) August 30, 2026
Officers are actively searching for the suspect. Please remain indoors and avoid the area until further notice. pic.twitter.com/2gPWQxHy3r
Manzanita Park is a compact, 1-acre municipal park and recreation facility at 2701 22nd Avenue, sitting at the corner of 22nd Avenue and East 28th Street in the 94606 ZIP code, per City of Oakland park records. The park is home to a recreation center and includes an outdoor basketball court known as Curry Court, which NBA star Stephen Curry and Curry Brand renovated in January 2021 to give local youth an upgraded place to play, according to posts from the Manzanita Recreation Center.
A Neighborhood With a Painful History
Sunday's shootout was not the first time gunfire has erupted at this exact intersection. In January 2006, a high-powered shooting at 22nd Avenue and East 28th Street near the recreation center killed two men and injured three others shortly after the center had closed for the night, SFGATE reported at the time. The decades-old case underscores that the corner has periodically been the scene of serious violence even as the surrounding neighborhood built out family-oriented amenities like Curry Court.
How Oakland Warns Residents During Active Threats
A shelter-in-place order instructs residents to go indoors, lock their doors and windows, and remain self-sufficient until emergency personnel provide further direction, according to emergency management definitions used by the City of Oakland and the Fresno County Fire Protection District. Oakland typically pushes out these kinds of urgent alerts through its AC Alert and Nixle notification systems, door-to-door contact from first responders, and three-minute blasts from the city's 27 emergency sirens, per reporting from The Oaklandside.
Under California Penal Code Section 409.5(c), anyone who willfully enters a closed emergency or law-enforcement zone after being told to stay clear can be charged with a misdemeanor, though the law makes clear that residents already inside their own homes before a perimeter closure are not committing a crime by staying put. That legal framework governs how police can enforce boundaries like the one set up around Manzanita Park on Sunday.
Incident Comes Amid a Broader Drop in Violence
The standoff arrived even as Oakland has posted some of its lowest violent crime numbers in a generation. Oakland Police Department quarterly figures released in April showed a 22% drop in violent crime during the first quarter of 2026 compared with the same period in 2025, with homicides falling 39% from 23 to 14. The city recorded 67 homicides in all of 2025, a 22% decrease from 86 the year before and a 25-year low, according to Oakland Police Department statistics cited by The Guardian.
Oakland officials have credited the city's Ceasefire initiative, run through the Department of Violence Prevention, with helping suppress retaliatory shootings through targeted life coaching and community intervention work, the same Oaklandside report notes. Even so, Sunday's incident at Manzanita Park was a reminder that episodes of gun violence can still disrupt residential East Oakland blocks despite the citywide downward trend. Oakland police had not released further updates on the search for the suspect as of Sunday evening.
