PHOTOS: Powerful images show clashes with police, demonstrators during protests over George Floyd's death

In cities across the United States, protesters angered over the death of George Floyd faced off against heavily-armed officers, with some smashing police cars, ransacking businesses and setting fires that smoldered through the night.

Fears of another cycle of violence were palpable this weekend as cities from Atlanta to Minneapolis grappled with the scope of the damage, and pleas for calm from elected officials and others seemed to do little to dampen the anger.

In all, more than two dozen cities experienced racially diverse protests, many peaceful but some violent.

The protests spreading and escalating across the country over George Floyd, who died after nearly nine minutes with his neck under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer.

Police have arrested nearly 1,700 people in 22 cities since Thursday, according to a tally by The Associated Press. Nearly a third of those arrests came in Los Angeles, where the governor declared a state of emergency and ordered the National Guard to back up the city's 10,000 police officers as dozens of fires burned across the city.

Many of those out on the streets spoke of frustration that Floyd's death was one more in a litany. It came in the wake of the killing in Georgia of Ahmaud Arbery, who was shot after being pursued by two white men while running in their neighborhood, and in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic that has thrown millions out of work, killed more than 100,000 people in the U.S. and disproportionately affected black people.