Police body camera footage and dispatch audio obtained by Richmondside details the chaotic moments before the fatal shooting of 51-year-old Jose de Jesus Mendez by Richmond police officers last year along the Carlson Boulevard train tracks.
Richmondside requested the footage and audio as part of a California Public Records Act request, and the city released views recorded by 13 officers.
Officers Nicholas Remick and Jessica Khalil shot and killed Mendez at 8:53 p.m. on Feb. 4, 2025 just off of Carlson and Cutting boulevards during what police initially described as a 30-minute “stand-off” related to a domestic violence probation violation investigation. Police said at the time it appeared that Mendez was holding a knife but the item was later found to be a knife sheath.
Family members of Mendez who spoke with Richmondside last year said that he had issues with substance and alcohol abuse and was living near his estranged family in an encampment along the tracks — oftentimes breaking the restraining order against him, making him a familiar face among law enforcement.
In dispatch audio released to Richmondside, one officer can be heard saying that Mendez was known to carry knives and had previously locked himself inside of a car while threatening to kill himself during a confrontation with police. Officers were looking for Mendez that night because they were told he was making threats against his estranged wife and her mother.
Mendez, according to the footage, was standing along a fence that runs parallel to Carlson Boulevard with a water-filled ditch between him and more than a dozen officers who were trying to detain him.
The camera footage shows various officers pleading with Mendez, who was threatening to kill himself, for about 30 minutes. He was holding what was later found to be a knife sheath to his neck and grabbing onto the waistband of his pants.
“We don’t want to do anything to you,” Richmond police officer Fernando Garcia told Mendez in Spanish. “Jose, talk to me, please.”
Mendez was emotional, at times fighting back tears while asking to see his son and then cursing at officers, saying they couldn’t do anything for him since he was “already dead.” He asked officers to leave but they responded that they couldn’t.
Mendez can be heard telling officers he wouldn’t drop the sheath until he was allowed to speak to, at first, his son and, then shortly after, local Spanish-language television news outlets. He wanted to give his “statement before they (officers) kill me.”
“We don’t want to hurt you,” Garcia kept repeating to Mendez while trying to persuade him to drop the object by promising that he could speak to his son on the phone.
Officers also told Mendez that a helicopter hovering overhead to provide light was a Spanish TV news station but Mendez still refused to drop the sheath.
Just minutes before the shooting, a number of officers with tasers, firearms and tactical shields, including Remick and Khalil, gathered around the ditch to approach Mendez from the right.
As Mendez appeared to notice the group of officers, he began to walk toward them despite being told to stop. Officers tased Mendez twice before he attempted to run toward them and Remick and Khalil opened fire, striking Mendez a number of times. Remick’s weapon can be seen firing at least 10 shots while Khalil, after the incident, told officers that she believed she shot Mendez at least once.
The Contra Costa County District Attorney’s Office is still reviewing the shooting and will determine if the use of force was justified or whether criminal charges should be filed. Additionally, the California Department of Justice’s investigation is still open, according to the DOJ’s website.
Richmond Police Officers Association’s (RPOA) President Ben Therriault told Richmondside Tuesday that it is easy to look at incidents such as this in hindsight but said that officers are often tasked with making quick decisions in “rapidly evolving” situations.
“It’s easy to look back on but that’s not how they (incidents) are judged,” Therriault said. “The suspect put them in that situation.”
In the aftermath of the shooting, Remick was reinstated on Feb. 20. Six months later, in August, he was one of two officers who shot and killed 27-year-old Angel Montaño, a Richmond High School graduate who served in the Marine reserves, at an Iron Triangle home after Montaño rushed at them holding two kitchen knives.
Remick, and the second officer, Colton Stocking, have yet to be reinstated since that shooting, a source of tension between the police union and city officials. During the Richmond City Council’s Feb. 3 meeting, a number of officers, including Remick, called for his reinstatement as they asked the council to finalize the union’s collective bargaining agreement.
On Tuesday, Therriault issued a press release saying that officers were planning to rally for Remick and Stocking’s reinstatement prior to the city council meeting and said that by City Manager Shasa Curl not reinstating them the city was opening itself up to “legal risk.”
“This is a complete failure of leadership,” wrote Therriault. “The City Manager has the authority, the responsibility, and the obligation to act — but instead has chosen to hide behind delay while officers who lawfully defended themselves and the public are left in limbo. This is not about process. This is about the City Manager refusing to do her job.”
Mendez told family that he wanted to be “killed by cops” the day before it happened
A stepson of Mendez who spoke with Richmondside last year told this reporter that the 51-year-old man had “never respected” the restraining order placed to protect his family. He detailed times when his mother, Mendez’s estranged wife, would give him and those he was living with food but that he would come to her home under the influence, demanding to see the couple’s son, and would have “episodes.”
Mendez’s estranged wife, who spoke last fall with Richmondside under the condition of anonymity due to fears that Mendez’s encampment friends blamed her for his death, said that he had expressed he wanted to be “killed by cops” a day before it happened.
“He had said he was done and that he wasn’t scared of the cops anymore. That if the cops came that they needed like six of them to kill him because he was going to kill ‘one or two of them first,’ ” she said. “He said to my son that ‘If your mom calls the police, I’m not going to go back to jail, they’re going to kill me but I’m going to kill one or two (officers) before that.’ ”
Therriault said that officers knew about Mendez and the “terrorizing” of his estranged family.
“In this case, he had shown a propensity for violence that required force to make a situation peaceful,” he added. “Most of the officers were aware of this guy, aware of the suspect and aware of all of our many dealings with him because we had several of them.”
Therriault also said that he didn’t think Mendez needed medication or mental health services.
“He was terrorizing and victimizing a family over and over and over again and was not changing his behavior at all,” Therriault said. “While you have to judge each individual situation by what is placed before you, it is hard to at the same time and you are allowed to take what prior history you’ve had in your decision making process and you have to be wary of that. It wasn’t like this was somebody who we’ve never talked to before or never dealt with. All the dealings in the past with him had been negative and prone to violence.”
Mendez was the first of three people to be fatally shot by Richmond police in less than a year. In addition to Montaño, last month Richmond Detective Brandon Hodges fatally shot Luis Angel Rivera Torres on Interstate 80 near Hercules.
