SAN JOSE >> Two plainclothes police officers were shot at Monday night — but not injured — while they sat in a parked car moments after a gunman threatened them at a nearby intersection, according to the San Jose Police Department.

One of the officers got out of their unmarked police car and shot back at the fleeing motorists, but there was no immediate indication that they were hit, Chief Paul Joseph said at a Tuesday news conference. No injuries have been reported in connection with either instance of gunfire.

“It is uncertain whether the suspects were aware that the individuals in an unmarked police vehicle were law enforcement officers at the time of the shooting,” Joseph said. “What is indisputable, however, is that this was a reckless and senseless act of gun violence in a residential neighborhood.”

“I recognize how easily I can be delivering very different news today,” he added.

Joseph said the shooting was reported at 10:38 p.m. Monday not long after the two police officers were stopped at an intersection near McLaughlin Avenue, and then confronted by two people in another car. The two still-unidentified men reportedly talked about being armed and tried to provoke a confrontation.

That led to the officers pulling their car over near McLaughlin and Melbourne Boulevard, where Joseph said they were trying to radio dispatchers and ask them to send uniformed police officers to seek the motorists.

That’s when the driver of the other vehicle, also unidentified at this point, performed a U-turn and drove toward the officers, with at least one of the occupants opening fire and hitting the police car multiple times. Joseph said one of the officers got out and returned fire as the assailants sped away.

Because the officers involved were in plain clothes, they did not have their body-worn cameras activated, Joseph said.

The officer who opened fire has not been publicly identified by the police department, but Joseph said he has been with SJPD for six-and-a-half years. The second officer has four years of service with the department.

Monday night’s shooting was the first police shooting of the year recorded in San Jose. It prompted Joseph to mention how more than a dozen SJPD officers have been the targets of gunfire in the past two years, and called attention to police efforts to remove illegal guns from city streets. He said 930 such firearms were confiscated by police last year.