Oakland's police cadet program shut down in 2023 due to a lack of funding. But Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee said at a press conference Wednesday that Kaiser Permanente and PG&E forked over nine hundred thousand dollars $900,000 to fund nine cadets for the next two years.
The program targets Oakland high schoolers and college students between 18 and 21 years old. Cadets work part-time at OPD while attending college, then enroll in the police academy after graduating.
Training and hiring more cops is part of the city’s plan to increase public safety. A study commissioned by the Oakland City Council claimed that Oakland needs to hire nearly 300 new officers. Right now, the city has 619 of which less than 500 are operational.
But not everyone thinks that hiring more police will make the public safer.
In 2024, Governor Newsom sent “surges” of California Highway Patrol officers to Oakland to address public safety concerns and what Oakland’s police union president calls a staffing “crisis.” Investigations by the Oaklandside found that during that year, Black and Latino drivers were stopped by CHP more frequently.
