A protester yells at a Missouri State Police officer Friday night during a protest at the Ferguson, Mo., police headquarters in Ferguson. Tense but peaceful protests are spreading their way throughout St. Louis.

FERGUSON, Mo. — Tense but peaceful protests over Michael Brown’s death and other fatal police shootings in Missouri and elsewhere stretched across the St. Louis region Friday as organizers urged hundreds of participants to avoid arrest so they could return for a weekend of demonstrations.

The four-day event called Ferguson October began Friday afternoon with a march outside the St. Louis County prosecutor’s office in Clayton and renewed calls for prosecutor Bob McCulloch to charge Darren Wilson, a white Ferguson officer, in the Aug. 9 death of 18-year-old Brown, who was black and unarmed. A grand jury is reviewing the case.

The demonstrations moved to Ferguson Friday night as protesters stood inches from officers in riot gear before demonstrators disbursed. Many then went to the site of a police shooting in St. Louis, where another demonstration is planned Saturday.

By 2 a.m. Saturday, St. Louis police had blocked a main road that crosses an interstate highway near Saint Louis University’s medical complex, but the heavy police restrictions didn’t keep hundreds more — including many newcomers from across the country who joined local residents — from marching in the streets.

“It’s important for this country to stand with this community,” said protester Ellen Davidson of New York City, a community college administrator. “This community is under siege. ... The eyes of the world are watching.”

The planned Saturday morning protest in downtown St. Louis will take place hours before the Cardinals host the San Francisco Giants in the first game of the National League Championship Series. And on Monday, a series of planned acts of civil disobedience are to take place throughout the St. Louis region.

“I’m not planning to get arrested,” said Davidson, who accompanied about 15 other members of Veterans for Peace from Illinois, Minnesota, New York and Tennessee. “But I do plan to do what I believe are in my rights as a protester. If I get arrested, that’s on the people who arrest me.”

Organizers said before the weekend they expected 6,000 to 10,000 participants, but the initial protest outside the county courthouse, which took place amid a cold and steady rain, didn’t draw nearly that amount.

Tensions increased in Ferguson, with hundreds of protesters gathering outside the Ferguson Police Department and chanting anti-police remarks such as, “Killer cops, KKK, how many kids did you kill today?” as a wall of about 100 officers in riot gear stood impassively.

In Clayton, officers escorted the several hundred demonstrators through the suburb’s downtown as they marched past high-end restaurants, jewelry stores, banks and law offices.

“We are here to demand the justice that our people have died for,” chanted protest organizer Montague Simmons. “We are here to bring peace, to bring restoration, to lift our banners in the name of those who’ve been sacrificed.”