Next month, the Oakland Police Department will dispatch a team of officers to Santa Clara County to protect the Super Bowl, but department officials say it won\u2019t impact their ability to staff patrols and other crime-fighting work in Oakland.<\/p>\n
At Tuesday\u2019s Public Safety Committee meeting, several councilmembers gave approval to OPD\u2019s plan<\/a> to send officers to Levi\u2019s Stadium for the NFL\u2019s championship game next month.\u00a0The full council still needs to approve the proposal. <\/p>\n Oakland will also send officers to help the South Bay city for World Cup matches at Levi\u2019s Stadium in June.\u00a0<\/p>\n Councilmembers were initially wary of the plan.\u00a0<\/p>\n For years, OPD and its supporters have complained that the department is dangerously short-staffed and that they cannot spare losing any more officers for duties like patrol and investigations.\u00a0<\/p>\n The department is budgeted for 678 officers but only has 613 filled positions, according to data reported<\/a> to the Oakland Police Commission. And the department is only able to field 518 officers because 89 are currently on long-term medical or administrative leave. OPD currently loses about six officers per month. For perspective, the department\u2019s 195th academy, which began last July, is down to 14 trainees; the academy that began in November has just 23.\u00a0<\/p>\n OPD also already relies heavily on overtime assignments<\/a> to backfill patrol and other critical positions, and year after year, the department exceeds its overtime budget by millions of dollars. A report<\/a> published last year found that OPD needs 877 officers to adequately cover the city.<\/p>\n Last year, Huy Nguyen, the president of the Oakland Police Officers Association, raised alarms<\/a> about \u201cdangerously low staffing\u201d and said, \u201cWe can\u2019t continue to leave open beats every night because we\u2019re understaffed. We make a lot of promises and we can\u2019t deliver.\u201d<\/p>\n Councilmember Carroll Fife told OPD she was struggling to approve the Santa Clara assignments when the police union \u201cis consistently talking about the lack of officers every single day.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cTo me, that is a contradiction,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Interim Assistant Chief Casey Johnson explained that the agreement with Santa Clara will not obligate Oakland to send more officers than the city can safely part with, and that other agencies will also be deploying law enforcement to the stadium.\u00a0<\/p>\n OPD will be reimbursed by the city of Santa Clara for sending around 25 officers who will be off duty and working overtime. This is OPD\u2019s second time sending officers to assist with a Super Bowl, and its first time handling FIFA events. The full council must approve the agreement at its next meeting.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Oakland officers will be equipped with tactical gear and can be called back to Oakland in the event of an emergency, according to OPD. The department\u2019s memorandum budgets 3 hours of travel time to and from Levi Stadium.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Johnson also noted that OPD will maintain regular assignments in Oakland, and that no officers who are assigned to work on the day of the Super Bowl will be allowed to volunteer for overtime assignments.<\/p>\n Acknowledging that some officers may want to go to the Super Bowl or a FIFA match because \u201cit\u2019s cool,\u201d Johnson said, \u201cWe have a city to protect. And the city is going to be a priority.\u201d<\/p>\n Charlene Wang, who chairs the Public Safety committee, asked if denying the resolution would create a rupture in OPD\u2019s relationship with Santa Clara. Bay Area law enforcement agencies often send officers to support one another during emergencies. Several jurisdictions recently offered to send Oakland help when a parole officer was shot and killed<\/a>, and numerous law enforcement agencies from across Northern California came to Oakland in 2020 during the George Floyd protests. The OPD staffer said a rupture wasn\u2019t likely, but warned that rejecting the agreement would send \u201ca little bit of a message\u201d to other Bay Area cities.<\/p>\n \u201cWe like to keep those relationships intact,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n