GoKawiilThis story was produced in partnership with the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley Journalism.
For five years now, Oakland has struggled with immense budget deficits. The city’s most recent financial forecast shows budget gaps hovering around $120 million each year until 2030, forcing major cuts to spending unless the city finds new revenues.
One major source of overspending in the city is the police department. By far the most expensive city service, the Oakland Police Department’s $386 million budget this year is about 19% of Oakland’s total spending. And each year, OPD has come under scrutiny for its runaway overtime spending, routinely blowing past its approved levels by millions of dollars. Last fiscal year, the Department spent over $55 million on overtime. Thirty-one million of this was over budget.
According to Huy Nguyen, president of the Oakland Police Officers Association — the city’s police union — OPD’s ongoing staffing shortage is driving overtime.
“At this staffing level, more officers will be forced to work excessive overtime, which in turn will accelerate attrition,” Nguyen said in a statement. “We cannot meet the needs of our community without forcing officers into more shifts.”
It is true that OPD is severely understaffed by hundreds of officers. Mayor Barbara Lee is attempting to shrink the staffing gap, with plans to increase the number of officers.
But historical data throws into question whether increasing staffing will rectify OPD’s chronic overtime overspending. A recent report by several civilian city unions found that over the past 15 years, even when department staffing increased, overtime continued to go up. From 2011 to 2024, staffing increased by nearly 9%. Over the same period, overtime went up by almost 200%.
Recent financial pressures have caused the city to lay off scores of civilian employees and freeze spending across a range of programs. Meanwhile, the number of police officers bringing in six-figure overtime packages rose dramatically.
In 2021, 58 officers were paid over $100,000 in overtime. By the end of 2024, the number of officers paid this much for overtime nearly tripled to 169.
And the number of officers making over $200,000 in overtime more than quadrupled from six to a total of 27 over the same period.
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