SAN JOSE (KCBS) _ Thousands of kids who take part in San Jose Police Activities League programs could soon have no place to play because of major budget cuts.

Part of the problem: three officers from the 60-year-old program have been reassigned back to patrol because of shortages in police staffing.

"We're looking at cuts across the board. From our most expansive programs, like our soccer program to our oldest program, which is our baseball program," said San Jose police Sergeant Lamont Cusseaux. "It's all across the board of all the different things that we do here."

KCBS Mike Colgan Reporting:

Cusseaux, who heads the San Jose Police Activities League, said the cuts would impact about half of the 12,000 kids in the program.

"We all know that schools are having difficult times with sports programming," he said. "We were an offset for that. But now, because of our budget constraints, we're no longer going to be able to support some of the high school kids that can't play at the high school level because of the cutbacks."

Sergeant Cusseaux has a meeting scheduled with police brass and said he hopes he can convince them to keep the program going.

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