More protests: Highway 24 blocked; vandalism, looting in Berkeley

A demonstrator kicks a police car during a protest in Berkeley, Calif. Sunday, December 7, 2014 shining light on the chokehold death of Eric Garner in New York City and the shooting of Mike Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. less A demonstrator kicks a police car during a protest in Berkeley, Calif. Sunday, December 7, 2014 shining light on the chokehold death of Eric Garner in New York City and the shooting of Mike Brown in Ferguson, ... more Photo: Jessica Christian / The Chronicle Photo: Jessica Christian / The Chronicle Image 1 of / 93 Caption Close More protests: Highway 24 blocked; vandalism, looting in Berkeley 1 / 93 Back to Gallery

Hundreds of protesters returned to East Bay streets on Sunday for a second night of raucous demonstrations against police killings of unarmed black men in Missouri and New York.

Sunday’s protest started out largely peaceful in Berkeley, but by 9 p.m. crowds had climbed past lines of California Highway Patrol officers onto Highway 24 in Oakland, where they blocked multiple lanes of eastbound traffic.

Even as the crowd chanted “peaceful protest,” a group of people jumped on top of two law enforcement vehicles and kicked at the sirens, and several set small fires nearby. Police eventually moved protesters away from the cars, one of them damaged by fire.

A crowd of about 100 demonstrators moved east on the freeway toward Claremont Avenue while several hundred more protesters followed on the streets below. A little after 9 p.m., CHP officers in riot gear released tear gas and began herding protesters off the freeway. Officers arrested 8 people.

Soon afterward, five CHP patrol cars on Telegraph Avenue were dented and had their windows broken. A firework -- believed to be an M80 -- was thrown at officers.

Later in the evening, large crowds still remained in the streets, migrating to downtown Berkeley. On Shattuck Avenue and nearby streets, some businesses were vandalized and looted, and some trash bins were set on fire. Downtown Berkeley BART station also was temporarily closed.

By midnight, there were still a few hundred people on the streets. At one point, the Radio Shack on Shattuck at Dwight Way was ransacked. Later, the Whole Foods store on Telegraph was looted, with people taking and passing around bottles of champagne.

The evening demonstrations came less than a day after protests that lasted through the night Saturday and ended with police and protesters injured and at least six people arrested.

As crowds formed on UC Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza on Sunday afternoon, protesters said they refused to be deterred by the previous day’s police actions.

“It’s crucial that we stand up in the face of fear,” said Yvette Felarca, a member of the activist group By Any Means Necessary. “We need to show them that we will not stand for police aggression. We need to show them that the free-speech movement is not a relic.”

Around 6 p.m. Sunday, about 500 protesters returned to Sproul Plaza and began marching off the campus and into the city. Police appeared to be staying out of the way, with only a few officers visible among the protesters, although a police helicopter loomed overhead.

Marching by college dorms on Durant Avenue, demonstrators called out, “Out of your houses, into the streets.” As the crowd headed north on Shattuck Avenue, chanting and blocking traffic, drivers honked and called out cheers of support.

Near Berkeley’s main police station on Martin Luther King Way, protesters confronted a line of officers in riot gear standing behind barricades. Protesters raised their hands and chanted, “Hands up, don’t shoot” and “Shame on you.” Other demonstrators lay in the street for a staged “die-in.”

After the brief standoff with police, protesters marched south on Shattuck. When a handful of demonstrators broke off and began smashing windows of a Radio Shack at Shattuck and Dwight Way, the crowd booed and shouted, “Peaceful protest.”

One man who broke into the store threw boxes of looted electronic gear into the crowd, but several protesters tossed the gear back inside. A protester was injured when he tried to stop someone from damaging the store, according to Berkeley police.

Around 8 p.m., protesters split into two groups, one headed into Berkeley residential neighborhoods east of Shattuck. The other group, numbering about 200, marched toward Oakland and the Highway 24 on-ramp, where police formed a line to keep them off the freeway.

Protesters crashed the police line shortly before 9 p.m. and made it onto a Highway 24 overpass in Oakland’s Temescal district.

Earlier in the day in Oakland, about 50 people gathered for protests at the corner of 14th Street and Broadway. Many in the Oakland crowd held signs calling for justice in the death of Oakland resident O’Shaine Evans, 26, who was shot and killed by San Francisco police near AT&T Park in October after he allegedly pointed an unloaded gun at an officer.

The East Bay demonstrations were part of ongoing Bay Area protests after grand juries failed to indict white police officers in the deaths of two unarmed black men: Michael Brown, who was shot and killed in Ferguson, Mo., and Eric Garner, who died after being restrained in a choke hold in New York.

Saturday night’s action in Berkeley culminated on Telegraph, where protesters squared off with police from around the Bay Area, who were in full riot gear. Demonstrators chanted, “Hands up, don’t shoot,” and “Black lives matter.”

Earlier in the evening, some officers were hit by bricks, pipes, rocks and bottles, said Officer Jennifer Coats, a Berkeley police spokeswoman. One officer suffered a dislocated shoulder after being hit by a sandbag, she said. At least six people were arrested.

The Saturday protest started peacefully at 5 p.m. at Sproul Plaza, but demonstrators were soon joined by groups of black-masked demonstrators looking for trouble, onlookers said.

Video: Officers guard Hwy. 24 onramp in Berkeley protests

After marching down University Avenue to Interstate 80, where they were turned back by police, protesters made their way back to Telegraph, where flanks of police closed off roads and squeezed the group into a tight bunch at Durant Street.

Just before 10:30 p.m., after warning that the gathering was an unlawful assembly, police deployed their first round of tear gas. Protesters repeatedly regathered but finally dispersed early Sunday.

Evan Sernoffsky, Kale Williams and Erin Allday are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. E-mail: esernoffsky@sfchronicle.com, kwilliams@sfchronicle.com, eallday@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @EvanSernoffsky, @SFKale, @ErinAllday