CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Mayor Frank Jackson's entire administration walked out of Monday night's city council meeting in protest of councilman Jeffrey Johnson's call for the immediate resignation of Safety Director Michael McGrath.

McGrath was the last to leave. He remained seated until Finance Director Sharon Dumas appeared to persuade him to join the other directors.

"I don't care who walks out on me," Johnson shouted, as the officials paraded from council chambers. "But you cannot walk out on the people of Cleveland."

Jackson, himself, was not present, having been called to speak at a community meeting. But the exodus of his administrators was the latest symptom of mounting tension among city officials, police and the community in the aftermath of the U.S. Justice Department's report, laying bare the use of excessive force by Cleveland police.

For the second week in a row, dozens of protesters interrupted council's Monday night meeting -- in turns, reading portions of the federal report and calling for McGrath to step down.

McGrath, who earlier told Northeast Ohio Media Group that he will stay the course, turned his chair to face the crowd – even when the crowd turned on him, chanting for a full minute, "McGrath must resign!"

During the miscellaneous comments portion of the meeting, Johnson said he does not think the demonstrators' demands – for police body cameras and a democratically elected civilian review board to investigate police misconduct -- are unreasonable.

Johnson evoked some of the report's most egregious examples of police use of force and called on his colleagues to help ensure that the city honors the consent decree that must be negotiated with federal officials in the coming months.

He called the Justice Department's findings a "horror story." Johnson said he will participate in council's upcoming "listening tour" to hear residents' concerns at a series of forums.

"But I know what they're going to tell you," he said. "Fix the Cleveland Police Department."

Councilman Matt Zone countered Johnson's outrage with a call for temperance, and he praised Jackson for inviting the Justice Department to take a hard look at Cleveland police and for his leadership throughout the investigation.

"While some in the community say Mayor Jackson and safety leadership should be held accountable, what is overlooked is that Mayor Jackson should be commended for having the guts to ask the DOJ to investigate CPD," Zone said. "That might be one of the best acts in what clearly is a dark time for our city. The true mark of a person's character is not how they react to success, but how they react to failure."

At a news conference Thursday, Jackson said he disagrees with some of the conclusions drawn from the 21-month federal probe, based on more than 600 use-of-force incidents between 2012 and 2013, plus thousands of related documents and hundreds of interviews.

And he bristled at federal officials' characterization of the department's problems as "systemic deficiencies," choosing instead to call them "problems."

"There are problems in the Division of Police, and this review has demonstrated some of them," Jackson said when asked if he acknowledges the system-wide failures detailed in the 58-page report. "We will enter into discussions with the DOJ as to how we address those that really are problems."