OAKLAND — Amid the backdrop of a sprawling sexual exploitation investigation that has rocked its police department in recent weeks, the Oakland City Council voted early Wednesday morning to delay a planned 2017 police academy until an audit of the department’s recruitment and training policies is completed.

Councilwomen Rebecca Kaplan and Desley Brooks cast the two dissenting votes against the measure, which was proposed by Mayor Libby Schaaf. They, along with Councilman Noel Gallo, had proposed a competing proposal that would have removed the police academy, scheduled for early 2017, and instead redirected the approximately $3.2 million allocated for the academy to social service programs. The council was deadlocked on that proposal, with Schaaf casting a tiebreaking vote in opposition.

“Oakland cannot afford to backslide when it comes to safety,” Schaaf said in a statement Wednesday.

Two police academies that are scheduled to begin in July and October will move forward as planned, said a spokeswoman for the Oakland Police Department. If the audit is not completed before the scheduled start date of the third police academy planned for the coming fiscal year, it will not move forward, Oakland City Administrator Sabrina Landreth said.

The 5-2 decision to delay the academy comes after several years of ramped-up hiring meant to swell the ranks of a department that had been depleted during the Great Recession and subsequent budget shortfalls, along with retirements and attrition.

It also comes at a time of increased scrutiny on the department. Two officers resigned and three have been placed on leave amid allegations that they had sex with a police dispatcher’s daughter, possibly while she was underage. The allegations surfaced in a suicide note left by Officer Brendan O’Brien, a graduate of a 2013 police academy. The two officers who resigned, Terryl Smith and James Ta’ai, both graduated from the academy in 2014.

Those aren’t the only issues involving accusations of police misconduct by recent recruits. In April, former police Chief Sean Whent fired Matthew Santos, who had graduated from the academy in 2015, after he used a gun to threaten a man painting his apartment door in Emeryville. Cullen Faeth, another rookie cop who graduated from a lateral academy in December 2013, was placed on leave after he reportedly showed up at the home of an Alameda County probation officer, threw her to the ground and refused to leave.

Roughly one-third of the department — approximately 280 officers — has fewer than three years of experience.

Whent called for an audit of the department’s recruitment practices and “early warning systems” on March 9, a city spokesman said. Oakland City Auditor Brenda Roberts, the Oakland Police Department’s Office of the Inspector General and a federal monitor are conducting the audit, Schaaf said in a statement. The department has been under federal oversight for the past 13 years.

The department currently has 774 sworn officers, a far cry from the 830 officers it boasted in 2009, but still significantly more than the 669 it had in 2013.

With two police academies moving forward, Kaplan said there was no need to add a third.

“Given the magnitude of the work that needs to be done to change the recruitment and hiring practices, frankly, it’s not realistic anyway,” Kaplan said.

But the council members who carried the vote argued that further delaying hiring, which would be necessary regardless of the audit’s outcome or recommendations, would undo gains the department has made in reducing crime.

“We know we have an incredibly embarrassing and horrific situation in the police department with some of our individual officers that engaged in the sexual exploitation of a minor,” said Vice Mayor Annie Campbell Washington, “but I hope that we won’t make decisions about the general policy of hiring and the rate at which we hire based on (these incidents).”

Schaaf’s proposal includes $1.5 million to cover startup costs for a Citizen Police Commission, which voters will consider in November; $190,000 for a pilot program to combat homelessness; and $100,000 for increased outreach services for commercially sexually exploited minors.

Representatives from the Oakland Police Officers’ Association declined to comment on the decision.

Staff Writer David DeBolt contributed to this report. Contact Erin Baldassari at 510-208-6428. Follow her at Twitter.com/e_baldi.