Aftermath of the George Floyd protests in Minneapolis–Saint Paul

[19][25] A several-day period of civil unrest, particularly three nights of heavy rioting from May 27, 2020, to the overnight hours of May 29, 2020, however, resulted in an estimated $500 million of damages to 1,500 property locations,[4][26] 604 arrests,[3] 164 instances of arson,[6] and 2 riot-related deaths.[37] Minneapolis police officers fired 5,200 less-lethal munitions rounds over six days of the initial unrest, and 57 people sought urgent care during protests in from May 26 to June 15, 2020, including 23 hit in the head or face, and 16 suffering traumatic brain injuries.[63] The resolution in Minneapolis called for greater investments in housing, community development, youth programs, and small businesses to advance the interests of the city's residents who are Black, Indigenous, and people of color.Minneapolis police chief Medaria Arradondo, and other city leaders prepared as early as May 27 for the possibility of surrendering the station, which had been the location of tense protests beginning the evening of May 26, a day after Floyd's arrest and murder.[84] A mural of George Floyd on the side of the Cup Foods grocery store became one of the most recognizable images of the global protest movement that was sparked by his murder, and a digital rendering of it served as a backdrop to his casket at his funeral in Houston, Texas.[5] Estimates of property damage in the region were upwards of $500 million, making the unrest in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul area the second most destructive in United States history, after the 1992 Los Angeles riots.[115][26] By August 2020, the vast majority of the heavily damaged sites were still left in ruins or dangerous piles of hazardous rubble as the city required business owners to be fully compliant with property taxes before issuing demolition permits.Many small business owners in the Twin Cities who were affected by the riots and looting found they had to pay for repairs and rebuilding out of their own pockets as insurance payments fell well short of amounts needed.[109] The restaurant chain Arby's said it would wait to rebuild its location that burned on East Lake Street near Hiawatha Avenue, citing the potential for unrest over the trial verdict of the four police officers responsible for Floyd's murder.[35] In the immediate aftermath of Floyd's murder, former NFL star and civil rights activist Colin Kaepernick donated a "substantial" sum of money to a legal fund to defend protesters in Minnesota and elsewhere.[7][128] A five-day jury trial presided over by Judge Tamara Garcia took place in a Hennepin County court in July 2021 that acquitted Stallings of all charges, after he successfully argued his actions were self defense.[141][142] Minnesota Public Safety Commissioner John Harrington initially denied that the truck driver did the act intentionally[143] and released him pending further investigation,[144] but he was later charged in October 2020 in connection with the incident.Rupert then livestreamed his actions in Minneapolis on social media, which included inciting violence against law enforcement officers and breaking into a boarded-up Sprint cellphone store on Nicollet Avenue on May 29, 2020, and lighting the building on fire.[165] Two suburban Twin Cities men—the 29-year-old Marc Bell Gonzales from Wayzata and the 24-year-old Alexander Steven Heil from Monticello—faced federal charges for conspiring to commit arson at a Wells Fargo Bank building on Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis that was set ablaze by several people on May 28, 2020, and suffered heavy fire damage.[186] In December 2020, Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman's office declined to file charges against the pawn shop owner after a six-month investigation due to a lack of evidence to prove the shooting was not self-defense.[91][194] President Donald Trump and U.S. Attorney General William Barr placed blame for the riots on radical leftists and the antifa movement, but an investigation by the FBI later revealed no such trend among those found responsible for the violence and destruction.[10] Hacked police intelligence documents as part of the BlueLeaks data release revealed that federal and state officials were monitoring social media and online message groups for extremist activity related to the protests.However, some white supremacist groups discussed exploiting the events to incite racial violence, and federal officials later prosecuted several Boogaloo movement members for crimes committed during or after the riots in Minneapolis.Solomon and Teeter connected with an FBI informant who had posed as a member of the Hamas organization, who they agreed to supply weapons to, and they also made plans to bomb a courthouse in the Twin Cities metropolitan area.[215] Federal authorities charged Ivan Harrison Hunter, a 26-year-old man from Boerne, Texas, with one count of interstate travel to incite a riot for shooting 13 rounds from an AK-47-style machine gun into the Minneapolis third police precinct building while people were inside, looting it, and helping to set it on fire the night of May 28.[223] The Minnesota state legislature passed major police reform legislation in July that banned chokeholds, established an independent commission to review police-related deaths, and required de-escalation training for officers.Some activists wanted to consider the idea of unarmed crisis response personnel and re-purposing the police department's $193 million annual budget for education, food, housing, and health care.[246] The chaos and destruction in Minneapolis and Saint Paul became a subject of debate for politicians who attempted to assign blame to state and city officials for how they managed the crisis, while others pointed to historic factors of racial injustice that fueled public outrage.[251] Social justice organizations in Minnesota experienced a boost in revenue as a result of momentum behind the Black Lives Matter movement in the wake of Floyd's murder, with companies such as the Target Corporation and U.S. Bank making multi-million dollar donations to local nonprofits.[279] New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman characterized Minneapolis as a "dangerous and dystopian ghost city, racked by gun violence, since the police murder of George Floyd" in a June 22, 2021, opinion article.[305] Approximately 550 complaints were filed against law enforcement for tactics used against protesters during the two-week period following Floyd's murder, such as the firing of less-lethal munitions, tear gas, and use of excessive force on demonstrators who were engaging in peaceful activities.[303] The city reached a $2.4 million settlement with a protester who was struck by a rubber bullet while standing on a closed Interstate 35W onramp shortly before curfew on May 31, 2020, and who later lost his right eye due the injuries he sustained.[312][310] In the two years after Floyd's murder, the city also settled $22.2 million in worker's compensation for 144 police department officers, many of who retired early due to disability, with some citing post-traumatic stress disorder.Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party Senators criticized the report for not mentioning Derek Chauvin, the officer who murdered Floyd, or the reasons for the community's prevailing distrust of the Minneapolis Police Department as factors fueling public outrage.[321] The four-part Showtime docuseries "Boys in Blue" that debuted in 2023 followed the story of the challenges faced by the North Community High School football team in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd.