Oakland's police department understaffed by 199 officers, study says
Oakland Police need a baseline of 877 sworn officers, according to commissioned study
A study commissioned by Oakland's City Council in 2023 was released this week, stating that the police department needs a baseline of 877 sworn officers in order to meet the needs of the city. The Oakland police chief and police officers association, however, say that number is too low.
OAKLAND, Calif. - The Oakland Police Department is understaffed by at least 199 sworn officers, according to a new study commissioned by the Oakland City Council and made public after a records request from Oakland Report. The city published the 241-page study online here.
The Oakland police staffing report was written by an outside firm, PFM Consulting Solutions LLC, which found that the department should have 877 sworn peace officers, based on 2022 workload data.
The Oakland Police Department currently, the department has 678 sworn peace officers and 303 administrators budgeted for FY 2025.
The PFM study compared Oakland to seven similar-sized cities including Sacramento, Fresno, Long Beach, Albuquerque, Baltimore, Cleveland, and New Orleans. The study found that Oakland had 11.1 violent crimes per sworn officer, the highest rate in the group.
The report also said Oakland's Investigations Bureau has no centralized case management system, and little supervisor oversight, with some investigators self-assigning cases.
The study said there also is a shortage of criminal investigators to solve crimes. Oakland Police have 58 budgeted for FY2025, but the report said 105 are needed.
Hui Nguyen, President of the Oakland Police Officers Association, says the report's baseline recommendation is too low. He says it does not accurately account for the amount of time required by officers to fill out the paperwork required, and the workload facing officers as they try to keep up with the number of calls and investigations.
"You look, for example, at the robberies section. We have 6 investigators when they recommended 25. You look at our homicide section, where we have 15 investigators, and they recommend 18, but even that 18, that's not the number that we should be looking at. We should look at 25 or close to 30 with the number of homicide cases we have." 301
Nguyen says the city council needs to do something immediately.
"We don't have any academy in place at the moment for folks who are leaving the agency or retiring from the agency," Nguyen said. "That will probably take you say, past 2030 to reach that number based on the attrition rate."
"We have 105 officers that can retire this year and we need police academy to be able to prepare," Gallo said.
"This is a baseline to maintain what we have. It doesn't take into account making improvements to operational efficiencies or civilian staff...it needs more in-depth study,' Oakland Police Chief Floyd Mitchell told KTVU.
Gallo said PFM was supposed to include the non-sworn staffing levels in the report, and the City Council is still awaiting that data from the company.
Budget deficit causes issues for OPD.
By the numbers:
Last year, KTVU reported that OPD had 708 sworn officers, though the city's budget allowed for 712.
"The only way to get there is the budget, take money from other services that we're providing. We need to prioritize public safety and, clearly, in any government around the world, public safety is number one," Noel Gallo, Oakland City Council President said.
The report also notes the challenges due to the City of Oakland's budget deficit, which has placed a hiring freeze for most new roles.
From FY 2021 to FY 2025, OPD's authorized positions shrank by more than 10%, down to 981 in 2025.
As of FY 2025, the department's vacant roles totaled roughly 11.9%. Recruiting new officers to the city was tough before a hiring freeze was put into effect. Now it's impossible.
How were the numbers calculated?
Dig deeper:
To determine the number of officers the City of Oakland needs, the firm first established a "baseline workload". The baseline expectation for staffing was then calculated using the baseline workload.
The firm found that some data needed to calculate the baseline workload and staffing levels was unavailable, citing that OPD does not have a centralized database that tracks assigned and cleared cases.
The firm and its report were commissioned by Oakland's city council in 2023.
What are crime rates looking like in Oakland?
Big picture view:
Though Oakland has a tough reputation when it comes to crime, but violent crime rates, particularly homicide, have dropped in the city in recent years.
Oakland's final homicide count ended at 86 people killed in 2024, according to the East Bay Times. There were 126 homicides in Oakland in 2023.
The Source: Oakland Police Staffing report shared by PFM Consulting Solutions LLC