Protestors who gathered in downtown Oakland Friday evening to demonstrate following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis this week were met with tear gas and flash bangs and forced to retreat from Broadway shortly before 9:30 p.m.

A protest billed as the Minneapolis Solidarity Demonstration began to escalate around 9 p.m. when police officers lined up to block Oakland Police Headquarters from demonstrators began spraying tear gas while protestors set off fireworks and hurled bottles.

As protestors began choking from the tear gas, police officers continued to use flash bangs to disperse the crowd.

A statement tweeted by the Oakland Police Department at 9:44 p.m. said, “Oakland Police are notifying the crowd at 7 and Broadway the demonstration is now an Unlawful Assembly. Multiple officers were injured when projectiles were thrown. We are requesting people to leave the area.”

Exactly an hour before, interim Oakland Police Chief Susan Manheimer appeared in a video on social media telling demonstrators, “If you’re out here, let’s keep it safe, let’s make Oakland strong.”

As the crowd began to move away from Oakland Police Headquarters, protestors began covering nearby buildings in graffiti and smashing windows at buildings such as the 24-story Clorox Building and Wells Fargo on Broadway.

Chase Bank in downtown Oakland was one of the buildings with boarded up windows, but the boards were ripped off and glass was shattered. Dozens of people began looting Walgreens on Broadway after tearing down a security gate in front of the store.

An officer with a megaphone at 7th Street and Broadway repeatedly announced the police formed a line to “facilitate the march,” but warned unlawful actions and violence would lead to the declaration of an unlawful assembly.

That declaration was ultimately made around a half hour after police initially began using tear gas when approached by protestors.

The protest started around 7:30 p.m. on Friday when people began marching from 14th Street up Broadway toward Oakland Police Headquarters chanting “What’s his name? George Floyd.”

As protesters walked down Broadway at the beginning of the march, many also chanted “Hands up, don’t shoot,” as they passed businesses that had boarded up their windows in anticipation of Friday’s demonstration.

The demonstration began peacefully, with protesters walking together down Broadway, many yelling “Hands up, don’t shoot” as they passed businesses that had boarded up their windows in anticipation of the demonstration. As they approached Oakland Police Headquarters shortly before 8 p.m., some could be heard chanting, “No justice, no police, no racist police” at the officers and Alameda County sheriff’s deputies who had lined up in front of the building.

By 9 p.m., however, the mass of people had split, amoeba-like, into separate groups, marching in different directions, including toward Chinatown.

The scene was similar to one that played out hours earlier in San Jose. where a protest that began at city hall eventually made its way onto Highway 101, stopping traffic in both directions. Shortly after, the march rapidly devolved into violence, as police officers began shooting tear gas canisters to disperse crowds downtown.

Elsewhere around the Bay Area, protestors in cars stopped their vehicles on the upper deck of the western span of the Bay Bridge, causing a significant traffic delay.

Additional marches are planned in Oakland this weekend. The Anti-Police Terror Project, which did not organize Friday evening’s Oakland protest, is planning on holding a virtual vigil Saturday afternoon and a car caravan for Floyd and Breonna Taylor, an African-American woman shot to death in her apartment by Louisville police officers in March.

In a statement released Thursday, Cat Brooks and Rebecca Ruiz of the Anti-Police Terror Project explained why the risks associated with protesting during a pandemic outweighed the threat posed by COVID-19.

“The risk in the minds of many Black and Brown people is worth it. Rightly so, we feel enough is enough and post this pandemic, we want a world worth fighting for. One where there is a semblance of justice. One where our lives actually do matter. It’s a conundrum because we want to live but, also, we want to live,” the statement said.

Manheimer released a statement early Friday saying the members of her department were “deeply disturbed,” by what they observed in the video of Floyd’s death.

“We stand with our community in denouncing this incident and all incidents of police brutality,” Manheimer said. “We stand with all in our community who have traditionally been marginalized, oppressed and who have been harmed by our systems and institutions. We extend our deepest condolences to the family of George Floyd and to that entire community.”

Also on Friday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom opened an hour-long press briefing with a statement on Floyd’s death urging people to be “more resolved now than ever to do more and be better.”

“You’ve got to change culture,” Newsom said. “You’ve got to change people’s hearts and minds. It’s not just laws on the books. We’ve got to change who we are and recognize what we are capable of being.”