Andy Lopez protesters enter Highway 101 in Santa Rosa, met with police in riot gear (w/video)

A demonstration over the shooting death of 13-year-old Andy Lopez turned into a tense standoff with riot-gear-clad police Saturday afternoon after a group of angry protesters blocked traffic on Highway 101 near the Third Street off-ramp.

The decision by about 20 people to march up onto the busy freeway shortly after 4 p.m. escalated what had been a passionate but peaceful protest into a potentially volatile confrontation with police from three law enforcement agencies.

No arrests were made and the show of force by officers ultimately coerced protesters - many of whom were from outside Sonoma County - off the freeway.

But the faceoff that followed at the base of the offramp between about 30 Santa Rosa police officers and a group of boisterous protesters who tried in vain to provoke them underscored just how potent and enduring the movement protesting Lopez’s death remains.

“What we did today was phenomenal!” Ras Ceylon, an activist from Oakland, told marchers after they marched back to Old Courthouse Square. “It was a rebellious act of struggle!”

The demonstration began around 1 p.m., when 200 or more protesters gathered in Old Courthouse Square to express their dismay over Sonoma County District Attorney Jill Ravitch’s decision to not bring criminal charges against Deputy Erick Gelhaus.

Ravitch said Gelhaus acted within the law when on Oct. 22 he shot and killed Lopez as the boy walked down the street carrying an airsoft BB gun that resembled an AK-47 rifle.

“Ravitch says justified, we say homicide!” the crowd chanted as activist Jonathan Melrod denounced her decision.

The event was in many ways similar to others held before Ravitch’s decision, with people carrying signs reading “Jailhouse for Gelhaus” and “Why 7 shots?” - a reference to the seven times Lopez was shot.

But there was also a sharper edge to many of the speeches, behavior and slogans of protesters.

“Ravitch and (Sonoma County Sheriff Steve) Freitas will not do the job; we have to do it for them!” said Marni Wroth with the Justice for Andy Lopez Coalition.

Organizers told protesters who wanted to walk on the sidewalk to “go home.” Some referred to police as “pigs.” Someone scrawled “Serve and Protect, not shoot to kill” in chalk on the sidewalk, as well as some obscenities about police on the city’s historic Ruth Asawa fountain.

Past marches have largely avoided disrupting traffic, but Saturday’s protesters made of point of doing just that.

Right after leaving the square, marchers shouting into megaphones and blaring whistles blocked Fourth Street and Mendocino Avenue by lying in the middle of the intersection for several minutes. They did so again at several downtown locations, including in front of crowded restaurants like Russian River Brewing Co. and Flipside. A few protesters moved off the street and walked right up to diners at Flipside before managers closed the restaurant’s large windows.

Many protesters used chalk to write slurs against the police and draw outlines of bodies in the intersections. They took photos and videos, many of which appeared on social media virtually in real time. Santa Rosa police on motorcycles kept their distance, diverting traffic away from the protest route.

When they marched west on Third Street, some protesters called it a day while others continued. A smaller group of perhaps 150 continued under the Santa Rosa Plaza mall. When they arrived at Morgan Street, a number of protesters carrying signs and cameras walked past two CHP officers and headed up the offramp and onto the freeway.

Amy Reilly, a 31-year-old bartender from Rohnert Park, was stopped in traffic on Highway 101 as she drove to work when she spotted a group of people yelling at cars stuck on the offramp.

“They were flipping everyone off,” Reilly said. “I was like, ‘Oh, my God, what’s going on?’?”

She said she was frightened because several protesters wore ski masks or scarves covering their faces, and they carried long sticks that, for a second, looked like guns, she said. They turned out to be digital cameras mounted on poles, but the experience was still upsetting, she said.

“I didn’t know what they were going to do,” she said.

Protesters then unfurled a banner and made their way across the lanes to eventually block all the northbound lanes, Reilly said.

“They blocked the whole road,” she said.

At one point, two protesters dashed into the southbound lanes and blocked traffic there briefly, as well, according to witnesses.

Two CHP officers soon approached, one armed with a less-than-lethal bean-bag gun. He pointed the weapon, with its bright orange markings, directly at the two protesters, who turned tail and ran back to the northbound lanes, witnesses said.

Up until that point, Santa Rosa police had been content to give protesters a wide berth. But the CHP asked for assistance when the marchers headed toward the freeway, and about 30 Santa Rosa police officers responded to the intersection.

“We requested the Santa Rosa police because we were vastly outnumbered,” CHP officer Marcus Hawkins said.

As protesters shouted “No justice, no peace, f--- the police,” officers with batons drawn marched up the ramp after the cars had cleared and formed a line blocking any additional protesters from going up. A crowd gathered in the mall parking garages taking photos of the scene.

“If they had stayed on the highway, we probably would have been forced to arrest protesters to get rid of the safety hazard,” Santa Rosa Police Capt. Craig Schwartz said.

It didn’t come to that. After about 15 minutes, CHP officers converged on the protesters blocking the northbound lanes and they began moving back down the offramp.

The crowd that had faced off in front of the line of officers cheered and the group returned to Third Street. The standoff continued for several more minutes as protesters danced in front of, taunted and in one case spat at officers who remained stoic.

After another approximately 20 sheriff’s deputies showed up, the crowd move northward. They turned into the Santa Rosa Plaza parking lot and entered Macy’s through the west entrance.

Protesters then took a quick march through Macy’s, where many shoppers appeared shocked by the loud chanting and whistling. A few of the protesters knocked clothes off hangers but otherwise there were no reports of damage, and no arrests were made.

The crowd exited the store on B Street, where they briefly blocked traffic before heading back toward Old Courthouse Square.

One Macy’s shopper said protesters should not have come into the store.

“I think it’s really nervy,” said the woman, who gave her first name as Stephanie.

“We’re just peaceful people trying to get through our day,” she said.

Another shopper, Barbara Dees of Rohnert Park, was not as bothered by the interruption to her shoe shopping, saying what the group did meets the “definition of protesting, wouldn’t you say?”

But even after the crowd left Macy’s, Dees was still unaware of what the protest was about. Told it was about Lopez’s death, Dees expressed mixed feelings about Ravitch’s decision not to file criminal charges against the sheriff’s deputy who shot the boy.

Dees said she was once held at gunpoint and feared for her life.

“From someone who had their life threatened, I can see why he (the deputy) took that action,” she said. “But I was not professionally trained.”

Back at Old Courthouse Square, protesters congratulated themselves on a forceful and positive protest they said showed what a powerful force for change they can be.

Forrest Schmidt said history has plenty of figures, like Gandhi and Martin Luther King, who used civil disobedience to achieve their ends.

“Confrontation changes the world,” he said.

Staff Writer Derek Moore contributed to this article. You can reach Staff Writer Kevin McCallum at 521-5207 or kevin.mccallum@pressdemocrat.com.