‘God Knows What’s Going to Happen’: Minneapolis Braces for Verdict in Floyd’s Death

Businesses boarded up and residents held their breath, fearing a repeat of last year’s unrest if the jury brings back a decision that the public sees as unjust.

Around midday last Monday, Samir Patel received a phone call from his friend, a dentist: Gunshots had rung out, his friend told him, and the contractors who were rebuilding the office he lost in last year’s unrest had fled. He was boarding up, and he told Mr. Patel he should move quickly to protect his own business, a dry cleaning shop.

And so Mr. Patel got in his car and drove to his shop, cleared out all of his customers’ clothes and brought them home. Maybe he couldn’t protect his building, he said, but at least he could save the clothing his customers had entrusted to him.

“We don’t know what will happen,” said Mr. Patel, an immigrant from India who said he suffered half a million dollars in damage in last year’s civil unrest following the police killing of George Floyd. He had to deplete his savings and retirement accounts just to get his business open again. “We can’t predict now,” he said. “It’s beyond your imagination now.”

Elite Cleaners, Mr. Patel’s shop, is on a side street, not far from the shell of the Minneapolis Police Department’s Third Precinct station house, which burned last year in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death. The surrounding community of Lake Street, a corridor of immigrant-owned businesses — taquerias, furniture shops, liquor stores and cafes — was devastated by looting in the days of protests and the riots that followed. The city has said that the unrest led to $350 million in losses, with more than a thousand buildings either destroyed or damaged.

Now, almost a year on, Minneapolis is a place consumed with grief and fear.