Oakland’s police union recently approved a tentative five-year contract that calls for a 14% wage increase in an effort to recruit and retain officers in the face of major staffing shortages. Now the City Council will have the final say.
The contract, which will receive its first reading before the City Council on Sept. 15, seeks to make Oakland Police Department more attractive to officers with higher pay and retention bonuses. However, officers will have to pay higher healthcare premiums and pension costs.
“We have to set up a system where we can stay competitive when it comes to recruiting. Alameda County Sheriff’s is aggressive at recruiting people. And we need to show that we can be competitive,” said Huy Nguyen, president of the Oakland Police Officers Association. “At some point, our members will get used to it, but there has to be some kind of help to provide a path for financial stability.”
Interim City Administrator Betsy Lake said both sides of the negotiating table had a mutual understanding of the financial stakes facing each side. The tentative agreement addresses those and creates a framework to achieve long-term sustainability at both the city’s finance office and police department.
“This tentative agreement represents an important step toward containing the City’s long-term compensation costs while still recognizing the difficult and demanding work performed by Oakland police officers,” Lake said in a statement. “We are grateful to Oakland’s officers for their dedication to our community and to the OPOA bargaining team for recognizing the very real financial constraints facing the City.”
A December 2024 study by PFM Group Consulting for the Oakland Office of the Inspector General found the Oakland Police Department was not just understaffed, but it failed to meet minimum staffing requirements set by voters through a ballot measure in 2024.
The city’s biennial budget calls for 739 sworn officers, and the voter-approved Measure NN sets a mandatory minimum of 700 in order for the department to be eligible for tax revenue for local public safety and violence-prevention services. Currently, the department has 603 officers.
Facing short staffing levels for years, Nguyen said decisions made with one-time funding during the COVID-19 pandemic caused regular recruitment pipelines to be severed for an extended period of time. As Oakland faced insolvency in late 2020, city leadership enacted immediate spending reductions in public safety, such as deferring and cancelling scheduled police recruit academies to save millions in immediate costs.
Appropriate staffing levels have plagued police departments across California, Nguyen said, but it’s acutely felt in Oakland, which has the highest property crime and violent crime rates in the Bay Area.
The December 2024 study determined that 877 officers were needed to effectively patrol the city and staff investigative units. According to California Department of Justice data, Oakland’s overall clearance rate for serious crimes — meaning cases that are closed or result in arrest — fell to 1.5% in 2022. In terms of violent crime, the Oakland Police Department cleared just 6.5% of cases, falling far below the statewide average of 41%.
“I’ve been in this profession for 27 years, and I will tell you that no other police departments do the work that we do,” Nguyen said. “The magnitude and massive volumes of calls that we handle with the few amount of officers that we have, that is our biggest challenge.”
City officials are tackling their own crisis.
Oakland’s multi-year, structural budget deficit has forced the City Council to adopt a bare-bones $4.2 billion budget through 2030 while facing annual deficits in excess of $100 million, according to the Oakland Finance Department.
The city has eliminated hundreds of vacant positions in response. Even still, spending has been driven higher by rising pension costs, healthcare premiums, and police overtime overruns of nearly $50 million annually, according to the finance department.
Nguyen said the union was mindful of the poor economic picture facing the city coupled with the need for concessions by the Oakland Police Officers Association.
“We understand that the costs will be more of a burden on the city, and we want to make sure that we want to split that cost at some point to help the city in the recovery process,” Nguyen said. “The men and women of the Oakland Police Department are willing to do that to make sure that the city does not go under.”
Considering the structural challenges facing both the city and its police department, Oakland’s new Police Chief James Beere said the tentative agreement represented a great day for the Oakland Police Department and the city.
“These new contracts would help ensure our officers’ pay is competitive with law enforcement agencies nationwide. It strengthens our ability to recruit the best and brightest while helping us retain highly experienced and dedicated officers who serve the people of Oakland,” Beere said in a statement. “Ultimately, this is an investment in the safety and service we provide for our community and officers.”