OAKLAND — Clashes between protesters and police across the Bay Area returned for a second night Saturday, with frenzied vandals taking over as the night wore on, wreaking havoc on the high-end shops of San Francisco’s Union Square, including Saks Fifth Avenue, and looting the Powell Street Center in Emeryville.
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As cities across the country tried to quell another night of violence in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced a curfew Saturday night and asked for the National Guard to help restore order. Iconic Union Square became an epicenter of unrest, with looters ransacking the Coach store of leather bags and Salvatore Ferragamo of shoes. Bras from Victoria’s Secret and cushioned jewelry boxes from the Swarovski store littered the sidewalks as police pushed protesters from block to block amid the sting of tear gas.
“What we are seeing tonight, the violence, the vandalism, the crimes that are committed in our city, not just against property but against other people, that’s something we will not tolerate,” Breed said Saturday night. “When it crosses the line we have to protect our city and we will do what we need to do to do just that.”
She imposed the curfew from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m., and said she had been in touch with Gov. Gavin Newsom about putting the National Guard on standby. “This is the last thing that I want to do as mayor,” she said. “I want peace. I want protest. But I don’t want the kind of violence and crime we are seeing play itself out across the city.”
The new day of demonstrations followed several chaotic confrontations that took place across the country Friday, as protesters came out to the streets by the thousands to denounce the killing of Floyd, an African-American man, by police officers in Minneapolis earlier this week. Derek Chauvin, the officer who notoriously subdued Floyd by pressing his knee against Floyd’s neck for several minutes, was subsequently fired and now faces a murder charge.
Floyd’s death has drawn condemnation from all corners of the country, including a chorus of police leaders. But clashes between protesters and police continued to escalate Saturday from Washington, D.C., to Las Vegas to Seattle despite curfews in a number of cities, including Los Angeles, and the presence of the National Guard in other states. Videos of burning police cars and swirling tear gas covered social media.
In Emeryville, dozens of looters stormed the Best Buy on Shellmound, many stuffing TVs into their trunks or holding onto boxes of merchandise balanced on the tops of their cars. They moved to the Powell Street Center nearby, breaking into Ross, Men’s Wearhouse, Chase bank, Metro PCS and Starbucks. People ran from BevMo, their arms full of bottles. Broken glass covered the ground. Looting continued for at least an hour before police arrived around 10:15. Police handcuffed several people, but most had already fled. Guitar Center and Urban Outfitters on Shellmound were also hit.
To keep its employees safe during protests, Target announced the closure of several stores across the Bay Area, from Alameda and Walnut Creek to San Francisco and San Jose.
In San Jose, the atmosphere near City Hall felt calmer than Friday’s hours-long protests, with some people sharing Slim Jims and granola bars and another strumming a guitar. “Today is a little more peaceful than it was yesterday,” said Erin Thompson, 24, who left Friday’s protest when rubber bullets and tear gas started raining down. “Man, it’s a wonderful thing to see.”
That calm shattered within moments when a single water bottle sailed past the police line. Immediately, police fired several canisters of tear gas and a slew of rubber bullets down 4th Street. Protesters screamed and sprinted en masse down the street to hide behind cars and pillars before turning back toward police, beginning a cat-and-mouse that lasted for the next few hours.
At 14th and Broadway in Oakland, where broken glass from windows smashed Friday at Walgreens were still scattered across the sidewalk, protesters chanted “no justice, no peace, no racist police.”
“I’m out here because I don’t want my daughter to die,” said Lisa Cardoso, 41, of Oakland, who brought her 10-year-old daughter, Tianna Jackson, who is black, to her first protest. “I want her to live.”
Protests started peacefully earlier Saturday in San Francisco. A mostly young and diverse crowd held signs emblazoned with messages like “Black Lives Matters,” “Blue Lives Kill,” and “White Silence is Violence,” listening to speakers on the steps of San Francisco’s City Hall.
“When the police in Oakland killed Oscar Grant in 2009, they were teaching you something,” said Reiko Redmonde, owner of Berkeley’s Revolution Books, alluding to Grant’s infamous shooting death at the hands of BART officer Johannes Mehserle at the Fruitvale transit station. “This isn’t one bad cop, this isn’t a bunch of bad cops. It’s the whole f—ing system.”
Although law enforcement managed to keep people off the freeway in San Francisco earlier Saturday, after dark, looters picked clean a Swarovski jewelry and looted a Walgreens at Hayes and Market. At a CVS drug store on Geary and Mason, alarms sounded as people jumped out of broken windows carrying bags of merchandise. In Union Square, police quickly crowded the Saks Fifth Avenue where looters had broken in.
In Oakland, BART announced that civil disturbances forced the closures of the stations at Powell Street, Civic Center and 12th Street Oakland and 19th Street. Early in the evening, protesters were outnumbered by dozens of police officers who stood by, watching them from both sides of the street. Hundreds of protesters marched near Lake Merritt.
Tristan Becerra, 23, came up from Redwood City to participate.“I understand black people’s frustration, brown people’s frustration. I’m just here to show support,” he said.
Just before midnight Saturday, police blanketed Telegraph Avenue in Oakland’s Uptown neighborhood with tear gas to disperse the crowd of rowdy protesters still carousing in the street. One canister after another went off, filling the air with thick smoke that left people choking, sobbing and scrambling to escape. A woman lay on the ground, not moving, while people around her yelled for help. Overhead, a California Highway Patrol helicopter called down to people to disperse.
On Friday, protests that began at Frank Ogawa Plaza in Oakland also devolved into looting, with demonstrators breaking the windows of businesses and making off with armloads of merchandise. Another group of protesters also shut down traffic on the upper deck of the Bay Bridge for a portion of the evening.
In San Jose on Friday, demonstrators stopped traffic in both directions on Highway 101 and vented their frustration by lighting small fires and cracking windows in the city’s downtown core. One protester was captured on video punching a police officer in the face. In one of the most violent instances from the night, a sheriff’s deputy fired at an SUV that fled after plowing into a group of protesters.
Robert Salonga and Peter Hegarty contributed to this article. Check back later for updates to this story.
