The correct response is anger when a carload of white people comes up behind you and your friends at a traffic signal in Annapolis and starts calling you the worst racial slur possible.

When someone in that car knocks one of your friends off his bicycle with rocks and then unleashes bear spray, the understandable reaction is to shove that rock right back in that ugly, hateful face.

When the police fumble their report, it sure feels like time to start shouting.

That’s not what the Rev. Joshua Jenkins and members of the Push’N Pedals Cycling Club did.

“I want this to be very clear,” Jenkins said. “We are standing up to hate, but we are showing love in the face of it. We are only going to show love.”

More than 200 members of the predominantly Black club and other cyclists showed love in a Ride Against Hate on Friday night, responding to one of the ugliest episodes of racism in Maryland’s state capital in recent years. Mayor Gavin Buckley, who champions bicycling as good for the city, was there, too.

Cyclists pulled bikes off car racks and out of SUVs in the parking lot of the old Sears at Westfield Annapolis mall, checked tire pressure and said hello. There were road bikes and recumbents, custom electrics direct from Germany and at least one bicycle with a carrier full of dogs trailing behind.

“They don’t like it when we stop.”

“I did nine miles on the trail the other day.”

“Good to see you, brother.”

More than half the riders were wearing the yellow and black of the Push’N Pedals. With “Dream Dream Dream” by Madeon playing from a speaker set atop someone’s car, the crowd began to make its way toward a helmeted Jenkins when he called them together for prayer and a safety talk.

“When the word got out about what happened, people started popping up,” he said. “They started saying, what we gonna do?”

Jenkins, a former Prince George’s County police officer who now is a pastor at First Baptist Church of Glenarden in Upper Marlboro, formed the club with two friends for something to do during the COVID pandemic. Today, it has about 100 members who join in social rides across the region.

On June 28, about 70 of them were in Annapolis for a night ride through the city, something they’ve been doing for about three years. They started at the mall, rode down West Street and stopped for ice cream at City Dock.

Jenkins said it’s the route they followed in their previous rides, fun times together with no problems. This night, insults got tossed from a passing black car. The cyclists ignored them.

As the cyclists pedaled to King George Street toward the Naval Academy Bridge, they stopped at a red light at the intersection with Annapolis Road. The black car from the earlier exchange pulled up next to them, and those inside started yelling racial slurs.

“The car pulls past, and they started throwing rocks,” Jenkins said.

One hit a club member, who fell off his bike. The man picked himself off the ground, Jenkins said, and stormed toward the car now stopped in the intersection.

A video shot by one of the club members shows the downed cyclist’s response and what happened next.

“We were trying to pull him off, and then the car pulls out and sprays the group with bear mace,” he said.

Bear spray is concentrated hot pepper in a can that looks like a small fire extinguisher. It’s designed to make an aggressive bear turn away, filling its nose, mouth and eyes with a rushing, stinging, chemical cloud. But it has other uses. The Jan. 6 mob used it to breach the police cordon at the U.S. Capitol.

Pull the safety, then the trigger and a secondslong burst follows, sounding like the devil’s own exhale.

“It’s like hhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaa,” Jenkins said.

The sound is audible in the video as the spray sweeps across 10 to 12 cyclists. No one took a direct squirt, which usually results in a trip to the emergency room. But the reaction was still visceral.

“Aaaaah! Are you kidding me?” one woman rider shouted as the car sped away.

Then a police officer from the Naval Academy support base across the Severn River pulled up with his emergency lights illuminating bikes, brightly colored jerseys, helmets and reflectors.

“He asks us if we’re OK but doesn’t say anything about the mace,” Jenkins said.

Maybe the officer didn’t see it, Jenkins said, arriving too late to see the rocks or hear the insults that preceded them. Because the bear spray was used from a moving car, it dispersed and no one was seriously hurt.

The bicyclists pulled themselves together and rode back toward their cars at the mall. Not realizing that the officer wasn’t with the Annapolis Police Department, or maybe thinking it might not even matter, Jenkins said no one called 911.

A Navy spokesperson said its police department had no record of the incident.

Two days later, Jenkins posted a video of the ride on the club’s Instagram page and called the Annapolis Police nonemergency line.

Jenkins told an officer what happened. Deputy Chief Stan Brandford said the officer did an initial investigation, looking at Jenkins’ cellphone video and starting a report. Brandford said his agency identified the officer at the scene that night as a member of the Navy police department.

The city police officer couldn’t identify the license plate in the video and turned his report over to his supervisor, marking it as a second-degree assault and possible hate crime.

“There was a delay,” Brandford said. “The supervisor looked at the report but didn’t forward it to [the Criminal Investigation Division].”

CID detectives don’t usually get second-degree assault complaints, but Brandford said they should have noticed the hate crime report. They didn’t. The department is trying to sort out what went wrong, but the weeks since the attack will make charging anyone harder.

When it appeared nothing was happening, Jenkins went to Buckley’s office. A meeting on Tuesday resulted in apologies, a promise to investigate fully and the jointly sponsored bike rally.

The mayor said a 911 call would have elevated the response, but now that the police understand what happened, they are looking hard.

“We don’t know who these people are, but we’re going to find them,” Buckley said.

The mayor was there Friday night, dressed in black. The avatar of Annapolis as a bikeable city didn’t know riders were fulfilling his dreams at night when the streets empty. He rides early in the morning.

“When they said 9:30, I said, well, OK. I usually ride at 6,” he said, marveling at the crowd surrounding him.

Jenkins said his group wouldn’t be deterred by racists who sped off into the night. Word of what happened spread through area bicycling groups, like the newly formed DMV Cycling Alliance and Bike Advocates for Annapolis and Anne Arundel County.

Angelique Best, head of the cycling alliance, said conflicts between cyclists and motorists are common. Racist attacks are rare, but that might be because no one is reporting them.

“That’s what the alliance of bike groups can do,” Best said. “We can get the word out and record them.”

Although the members of the Push’N Pedals were upset and angry about the attack, Jenkins agreed that the right way to respond was with love.

And that includes the love of a ride on a warm summer night in Annapolis, when the ice cream is cold and the friendship rolls warmly along the quiet streets.

“Absolutely,” Jenkins said. “We will go back to Annapolis.”

And so the 200 riders pedaled out of the mall parking lot, once again aiming toward the city’s heart.

“Push off!” the ride captains said. “Push off!”

This column has been updated to correct the Rev. Joshua Jenkins' role at First Baptist Church of Glenarden.