I am a Latina who was born and raised on the East Side of San Jose. I am a graduate of Bard, a prestigious liberal arts college. I am also an attorney.

Over the years, my family and I have watched our neighborhood transform from a relatively safe place to a neighborhood plagued by drug dealers, violent crime and an alarming number of homicides. Crime around the area of Tully and King roads has grown like a cancer; and like cancer, the problem seems to be spreading throughout the city.

I wanted to be part of the solution. I applied for and was offered a job with the San Jose Police Department in May.

As a recruit, I was required to attend the six-month San Jose Police Academy program. During my time in the academy, I was ranked academically No. 2 in my class by midterm.

But a few weeks before graduation, I was forced to resign. I had never before handled a firearm, and I was told by one of the academy’s sergeants that he would recommend my termination due to my poor firearm safety training performance.

I believe that with additional training, I could have passed the safety training component. But this is not about sour grapes. Rather, it is a cautionary tale about what I believe is a serious problem within the San Jose Police Department.

The San Jose Police Officers Association (POA) constantly complains that the department is understaffed and overworked. The department’s leadership says it is unable to fill the vacancies in its incoming academy classes. My class consisted of only 29 recruits; when I left, the number had dropped to 21.

The feeling I got while I was there was that the rank-and-file officers are not invested in building a bigger and better police force for San Jose. I believe this because on the first day of the academy, our orientation included the opportunity to meet Jim Unland, the Police Officers Association’s president.

In no uncertain terms, he blamed Measure B for the departure of hundreds of officers — and he told us that it would be better for the department and for us if we would just quit, right then and there. He said that our employment with the department did not help the POA’s cause in proving Measure B was killing the department’s recruitment capabilities. He urged us to find jobs elsewhere. He told us all of this as if he were doing us a favor.

As we listened to Unland, most of my fellow recruits and I knew that our very presence in that room belied the POA’s assertion. Measure B obviously had not deterred us. To the contrary, we were excited about the opportunity to join the department.

From a pool of more than 1,000 applicants, my class yielded 29 hires. This means that it is harder to get into the San Jose Police Academy (a 2.9 percent admission rate) than it is to be admitted to Harvard (a 5.9 percent admission rate).

Has the department deliberately kept the number of recruits artificially low at the behest of the POA? If so, then Unland and his POA members have done a major disservice to the people who live and work in San Jose.

Maybe I didn’t fit the San Jose police mold because I am a woman, or because I am outspoken, or because I am a lawyer. I was tossed from the academy because of my poor firearm safety training performance, without being provided the opportunity to undertake additional department training. I would have thought that a police department so desperately in need of good recruits would have gone the extra mile to provide training. It didn’t — and I have moved on.

I will be fine. But I worry about my community. I can’t help thinking that there is something seriously amiss in the San Jose Police Academy.

Elyse Rivas lives in San Jose and is substitute teaching until she resolves her career goals. She wrote this for this newspaper.