Dr. Manisha Sharma climbed on a bench outside the Johns Hopkins medical school campus this week and shouted: "If I can't breathe, you can't breathe!"

Dozens of students around her responded with the same phrase in unison. It was Human Rights Day, and medical students across the country were participating in protests similar to those that have been taking place with greater frequency since grand juries declined to indict police officers who shot an unarmed black 18-year-old in Missouri and choked to death a black man accused of selling illegal cigarettes in New York.

The symbolic starkness of medical students sworn to save lives participating in a demonstration known as a "die in" showed just how wide-reaching protests have become.

"People of all races, all different types of people and all different kinds of organizations not just civil rights organizations are taking part," Baltimore NAACP chapter president Tessa Hill-Aston said. "Everyone is seeing that there's something wrong."

Police brutality has come into focus in a big way, here and across the country. Acts of civil disobedience across Maryland have included a wide spectrum of people and also elicited a surprising reaction universities, workplaces, Congress and even law enforcement, which in the past might have opposed such demonstrations, now offer tacit support or, in the case of police, have shown restraint and acceptance.

Baltimore police have deployed hundreds of officers to monitor protests since August, when fatal police shooting of teenager Michael Brown in ferguson, Mo., sparked nationwide demonstrations. They have spent $450,000 in officer overtime to help keep the peace in Baltimore but have arrested no one a testament to both demonstrators and police, who have avoided aggressive tactics and shows of force that many say prompted violent clashes in Ferguson.

"The strategy is simply ensuring that citizens have the ability to peaceably exercise their constitutional rights," Baltimore police spokesman Lt. Eric Kowalczyk said.

This week saw a rally outside the University of Maryland School of Medicine, a march from Penn Station to the Baltimore jail, another up Main Street in Annapolis, and a peaceful rush-hour protest Friday in Columbia.

On Saturday, Baltimore police expect a sizable rally outside M&T Bank Stadium before the Army-Navy football game, while the NAACP and the National Action Network have planned a march that ends at Freedom Plaza in Washington.

Empowerment Temple of Baltimore has asked its congregants to wear black to Sunday services in honor of "unnamed African-Americans who have been brutally murdered by police," church spokeswoman Nicole Kirby said. The Rev. Jamal H. Bryant also plans to curtail Sunday's service at 12:30 p.m. to lead the congregation to a protest at Northern Parkway and Reisterstown Road, she said.

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Protest movement grows across all spectrums in Baltimore area