A company that specializes in helping cities recruit police officers has accused Oakland Councilmember Charlene Wang of wrongfully breaking off a deal to help the city set up a talent pipeline for OPD.

Police Hiring Solutions, a Washington-based consulting firm, filed a legal claim against the city of Oakland on April 23, which The Oaklandside obtained through a public records request last week. 

The company’s managing director, Mike Forehand, says that the city owes Police Hiring Solutions over $37,000 for helping Oakland set up a recruitment program to funnel military employees to the Oakland Police Department. Forehand wrote that PHS also gave up an $80,000 opportunity to work with a different agency to take on the job in Oakland. 

Police Hiring Solutions representatives met with Wang around Nov. 25, 2025 after the councilmember announced she was working with local organizations, including the Oakland NAACP, to find new recruits for OPD, according to Forehand’s claim. 

Like many police agencies across the nation, the Oakland Police Department has struggled for years to attract enough new cadets to replace employees leaving the department, resulting in significant understaffing, excess overtime, and reductions in police services. 

Police Hiring Solutions specializes in setting up recruitment systems for law enforcement agencies and has expertise in transitioning former military service members into law enforcement departments through a program run by the Department of Defense. Wang has repeatedly expressed interest in finding new sources of recruits for OPD. 

According to the legal claim, a potential first step in a lawsuit against the city, Police Hiring Solutions came away from its first conversation with Wang thinking it had a deal with the city to set up a recruitment pipeline for OPD. But months later, the company claims Wang and other city officials told them there was no deal, and no payments would be forthcoming. 

“It appears this claim resulted from a significant disconnect in internal City coordination,” Forehand wrote in a letter to the City Attorney. “PHS was directed by the Public Safety Chair and the Mayor’s Office to bypass standard procurement timelines to ensure the City could meet federal DoD deadlines in advance of the summer military transition surge. PHS performed this work in good faith, received formal approval from OPD leadership (including the Chief of Police), and delivered all proprietary assets.”

The Oaklandside sought an interview with Wang, who asked us for a list of questions, which we provided. Wang responded with a statement, saying her office has been proactive in identifying recruitment pipelines and opportunities to connect qualified candidates with careers in public service, including OPD. She said the proposal from PHS seemed like “a potential opportunity to help address the police staffing crisis while also strengthening recruitment efforts across other City departments.” She told us she “flagged it as an opportunity worth exploring.” 

Wang said the company’s claims of a breached deal are inaccurate, mischaracterize her conversations with the vendor, and omit significant context that she expects “will be addressed through the City’s response.” 

Forehand declined an interview request. 

Vendor claims he struck a deal with Wang

Wang wanted Police Hiring Solutions to start work immediately because there was a tight deadline to apply to the federal government for permission to set up a recruitment pipeline, according to the company.  

Usually when Oakland needs to hire contractors, the city publishes a request for proposals. After receiving competing bids from companies, city staff pick the best one. This is how the city is supposed to hire anyone for a service that costs $50,000 or more.

The city’s standard contract process can take a long time, and it would be handled by professional city staff who specialize in procuring contracts. To speed things up, Wang allegedly asked Police Hiring Solutions to scale its project to $35,000. This would keep the contract just under the $50,000 threshold that would require a request for proposal, the claim stated. 

Individual councilmembers are not supposed to get involved in hiring contractors for the city. The City Council has the power to approve especially large contracts. But individual councilmembers don’t have the authority to approve any size contract for city departments; that power belongs to the city administrator. 

Believing that Wang was acting as a representative of the city, Police Hiring Solutions claims that it quickly started working on the project. 

Wang told The Oaklandside that this is inaccurate.  

“At all times, I made clear that neither I nor my office has authority to negotiate contracts, approve procurement decisions or waive procurement requirements,” Wang wrote. “Decisions regarding procurement, contracting, and implementation rest with the appropriate City departments and administrators, not with a City Council office.” 

”Contemporaneous communications and documentation will show that I never authorized or committed the City to any vendor contract,” Wang said. 

The city administrator did not respond to an interview request.

Forehand said in the claim his company fulfilled its side of the agreement. Over roughly two months, they drafted an application to the Department of Defense, conducted market research analysis, designed a training plan for OPD, and granted the city a one-year period of exclusive program access to the Travis and Beale Air Force Base pipelines for law enforcement. Wang also signed a memorandum of understanding that was filed with the Department of Defense on Dec. 18, according to the company’s legal claim.

In January, the company claims Wang’s chief of staff notified them that their project had been approved by the police chief. Police Hiring Solutions said an OPD official also told them the training program had been approved, and that the department instructed the company to send an invoice.

But the payment didn’t arrive. Police Hiring Solutions wrote in its legal claim that it contacted then City Administrator Jestin Johnson, who allegedly refused to pay the company and said the matter wouldn’t be resolved in the foreseeable future. The company wrote that it also contacted Wang in March 2025, who allegedly cited geopolitical events in Iran and “optics” as reasons why the city was backing out of the agreement.

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