Citing "unsafe working conditions," Portland Commissioner Nick Fish directed his bureau employees and office staff to not attend City Council meetings in the Portland Building, according to an email obtained by The Oregonian/OregonLive.

The decision followed unrelenting yelling by protesters at a City Council meeting Wednesday afternoon.

"I have a responsibility to maintain a safe workplace," Fish said in a text to The Oregonian/OregonLive. "Council meetings are no longer safe."

A Portland security official said he could hear yelling from the first floor of the Portland Building, even though the protesters were in a meeting that took place behind closed doors on the second floor.

Mayor Ted Wheeler called the outbursts of protesters on Wednesday "hostile", "abusive" and a "stain on the civic life of our city." He apologized in a Facebook post to people who tried to testify only to get shouted over.

"I am saddened - and frankly embarrassed - by the behavior of many attendees, who were not there to participate in civil discourse but to disrupt," Wheeler wrote.

Marshall Runkel, chief of staff to Commissioner Chloe Eudaly, has attended more than 100 Portland City Council meetings in his current and previous jobs. He said Wednesday afternoon's meeting was the worst he witnessed.

"It was chaos in there," Runkel said.

Protesters have repeatedly shut down council meetings since Wheeler took office in January, demanding the mayor release information about a black teen killed by police and try harder to prevent homeless people from dying. They've worn targets on their chests, called the mayor fascist, mocked commissioners' "aye" votes with demonic renderings and laughed when the mayor tried to quiet them. At one meeting, protesters called Eudaly a profane name, which several of her staffers said visibly upset her.

"It has been building," Fish said in a text. "Yesterday was the final straw."

City staffers testify at council meetings in order to inform commissioners' policy decisions and to keep the City Council privy to work in the city bureaus.

Wednesday's disruption came after Wheeler tried and failed to quell protesters by starting biweekly open forums where Portlanders can complain about city action and inaction. The City Council also introduced and passed a controversial rule that allows the officer in charge of any city meeting to eject people for disruptive, dangerous or threatening behavior and to exclude them from future meetings for up to two months.

Wheeler said last week that he would not enforce the latter part of the rule after the American Civil Liberties Union called it unconstitutional.

ACLU Legal Director Mathew dos Santos criticized the mayor for failing to enforce existing rules that allow him to eject disruptors after three warnings.

"They mayor doesn't seem to use any of the tools that are at his disposal," Dos Santos told The Oregonian/OregonLive in an interview last week.

Mayoral spokesman Michael Cox said Wheeler wanted to try establishing a code of conduct before resorting to ejecting and arresting people after multiple warnings. The mayor sees the latter as an escalation, Cox said.

"The mayor takes the issue of abusive disruptions very seriously and the concerns of his colleagues on the council very seriously," Cox said. "He plans to have conversations with them about how we might better ensure decorum in City Council chambers going forward."

--Jessica Floum

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