Michael Short / Special to The Chronicle 2020

Oakland officials said Monday that they want to grow the city’s police force in an effort to confront a rising tide of violent crime that has gripped the city this year.

Mayor Libby Schaaf said her office was developing a proposal for the City Council to consider that includes boosting the number of active police officers and maintaining a larger overall police force.

Schaaf’s office also plans to recommend reversing budget cuts scheduled for next summer slated to freeze 50 police department positions. The hiring plan, which Schaaf said will be completed by Friday, will call for the creation of a new police academy class and will include a budget amendment to fund it.

The announcement, which Schaaf made with City Council Members Loren Taylor and Treva Reid, followed a fatal shooting in Oakland Sunday after a man confronted someone allegedly trying to steal his car. The incident was the latest in a string of recent violent incidents in the city.

On Wednesday, a security guard was shot while protecting a KRON reporter during a robbery attempt. He died from his injuries on Saturday. In a high-profile incident last month, retired Oakland Police Capt. Ersie Joyner was critically injured when he was shot during a robbery at a downtown gas station. He survived after fatally shooting one of his assailants.

The call for a more robust police force in Oakland also comes during a national debate over law enforcement reform in which Democratic mayors across the country, including Schaaf and San Francisco Mayor London Breed, attempt to walk a fine line between constituents who often disagree about whether cities should lean more on police or social services to confront crime and its root causes.

Schaaf said the city needs a multifaceted approach that includes both stronger police and enhanced social services to prevent violence and appropriately handle crime when it happens.

“We in Oakland believe in a comprehensive and effective approach to ending gun violence,” Schaaf said. “While we are not backing down whatsoever in our historic investments in prevention as well as a non-police response option called MACRO, we must address police staffing shortages and that is what we will do.”

The weekend’s spate of violent incidents, which resulted in the city’s 118th homicide of the year — not including nine killings that were deemed to be in self-defense, accidental or otherwise non-criminal — coincided with the police department’s ranks falling to 677 officers.

That’s the lowest police staffing level in Oakland in more than a decade and the first time that staffing levels dipped below the minimum 678 officers required by a 2014 tax measure that helps fund some of the city’s public safety programs, Schaaf said.

Barry Donelan, president of the Oakland Police Officers’ Association, said in a statement that the city’s loss of police officers has “helped fuel crime in Oakland,” and called the city’s failure to maintain the minimum number of officers required by Measure Z “yet another broken promise to Oakland residents.”

But Schaaf said the rise in violent crime is the result of “a perfect storm” of circumstances, including attrition within the police department that has been exacerbated by pandemic-induced hiring interruptions, a faulty bail system, and the pandemic’s effects on families and the criminal justice system. She said making Oakland safer will require reform in all of those spheres, as well as continued investment in violence prevention strategies.

“We must have the adequate resources and the staffing, as well as community safety officers, to deliver on keeping us protected in our city,” Reid said. “We must increase our efforts deeply to keep us safe, protected and at peace.”

The City Council voted this year to increase the police budget to $336 million and invest an additional $17 million in violence prevention and other social programs.

Oakland residents have been divided over how the city should fund the police department; some activists wanted the budget cut in half, while others insisted on a larger police presence on the city’s streets. Many residents felt conflicted, feeling wary of the police but increasingly reliant on them.

“We do have an attrition problem that we can’t ignore,” said Taylor, who dissented along with Reid when the City Council voted to increase the police budget. “We must continue to invest in the prevention, the deterrence, the immediate response and the investigations to keep our community safe.”

Oakland police officials held a news conference a week ago, to discuss a rash of violent incidents that occurred the previous weekend, including caravans of hundreds of cars with armed thieves who targeted dozens of businesses, as well as large sideshows. Police Chief LeRonne Armstrong told reporters that the police department needs help and urged city leaders, particularly members of the City Council, to “step up and start having a conversation about the loss of life in this city. Beyond the politics of whether you support police or not, there is a clear problem in this city.”

In October, Armstrong also appealed to Oakland residents, asking them to become more involved in helping to stem the surge in violent crime and insisting that making the city safer would need to involve the whole community.

“We can’t arrest our way out of this problem,” Armstrong said at the time. “We need family and friends and loved ones to grab their loved ones and give them the support that they need to to draw on city resources, community-based organizations’ resources ... so that they don’t have to engage in violence.”

The City Council has a special meeting scheduled for Dec. 7 to discuss the police department’s staffing issues.

Staff writer Mallory Moench contributed to this report.

Andres Picon is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: andy.picon@hearst.com Twitter: @andpicon