Oakland laid off 80 police officers Tuesday evening after negotiations between the city and the officers' union collapsed over the issue of job security.

In a press release, the city said its final offer to the Oakland Police Officers Association guaranteed one year of no layoffs, with union members paying an escalating percentage of their city pension, topping out at 9 percent in January 2013.

The city said the union originally offered to pay the 9 percent, but only in exchange for a three-year, "no layoff" guarantee.

Oakland City Council voted June 25 to eliminate 80 police officer positions to help close the city's $32.5 million funding gap.

In a letter posted on its website, the Oakland Police Officer’s Association said that it has made a number of important concessions and believes the city will be negatively impacted by the layoffs:

“We have negotiated in good faith and our door will continue to be open to members of the City Council. It has not been easy. By all accounts, including the Alameda County Grand Jury, the Oakland Police Department is woefully understaffed and these cuts, regardless of the public rhetoric, are devastating to the people of Oakland and dangerous to the police officers working the streets.”

Before the layoffs became official, Oakland Police Chief Anthony Batts publicly said that his department will prioritize calls to OPD and that there are 44 crimes his officers will no longer respond to in person. They include grand theft, burglary, car wrecks, identity theft and vandalism. Instead, citizens will be encouraged to go online and report those specific crimes.

Only hours after the talks broke down between the city and the union, citizens and councilmembers discussed the impact of the police layoffs at a public safety City Council meeting.

One local citizen at the Public Safety meeting said while she appreciates the work of OPD, police officers must tighten their belts like other city workers.

“We need all of you to protect and serve us,” she said. “It is getting ugly and if I was a police officer, and that could have been possible 29 years ago, today, I would have volunteered to give half of my salary just so I could keep my job and earned income. (Police officers) have always had your way, but not this time.”

Councilmembers at Tuesday’s meeting said no one wanted to see a cut in the police force.

“It’s a very sad thing that we are losing 80 police officers in Oakland,” said Councilwoman Pat Kernighan. “The last thing we need is a smaller police force, but we negotiated in good faith.”

Councilman Larry Reid said community policing is going to suffer as result of the layoffs.

 “I think it’s going to have a devastating impact on community policing,” Reid said. “The chief has a plan in place and certainly we hope that plan will work with 80 fewer officers.

“Certainly, he’s (now) got to do things in a much smarter and much more efficient manner if the plan he wants to implement is one that is successful and demonstrates to residents and to the nation that Oakland is not the fourth most dangerous city, but it is a safe city for people to raise their families and for businesses to come here and create jobs for the residents of Oakland,” Reid added.

City Councilwoman Nancy Nadel said the Council wants to work with Batts to insure that community-policing work continues in Oakland.

“We still have a community-policing ordinance and we need to re-visit that and have that come back to us so that we can work with the chief to find out about how we can maintain community policing and retain our PSOs,” Nadel said.

Oakland resident Geoff Collins said the layoffs are a tragedy that destroys community policing in the city.

“This starts a ripple effect,” Collins said. “Number one, these are the youngest officers that we have, because they go by seniority, perhaps they’ve been on the force three, four years. But, they’re our hope for the future in dealing with young kids in the community where we have our biggest threats with violence. They (young police officers) work closely with these kids and that’s the whole point, we want to turn (problems of violence) around.”

Collins said he believes the layoffs have affected police morale.

“That sent a chilling effect throughout the rest of the department,” he said. “Because without that guarantee we know that this Council will come back again in a year and will start pressuring the OPOA for more concessions with the threat of more layoffs. It’s devastating and it’s going to get worse. Because a lot of these younger cops now, who are probably going to get laid off in November, they’re already looking and then you couple that with the attrition of the older cops coming up on 30 years and this city could be below 600 officers in a year.”

Councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan, who voted against the reduction, said the most immediate strategy for the Council is to work with OPD in redeploying police officers in the most strategic way possible.

“I also feel that we need to work on the long term financial situation,” Kaplan said. “The ideal solution would be to deal with the police pension cost. Most cities no longer do what we do.”

Lowering police pension costs would allow the city to have more funds to hire more officers, she said.