Arriving before dawn Thursday, city workers began removing memorials and barricades at the Minneapolis intersection where the police killed George Floyd just over a year ago. The unannounced effort to reopen the area to traffic instead brought hundreds of people to the scene in protest.
The crews arrived at 4:30 am with bulldozers and other equipment to move the concrete barriers that have for more than a year blocked the intersection outside Cup Foods. A white police officer knelt on the neck of Floyd, a Black man, outside the corner store for more than nine minutes in May 2020 as he took his last breaths.
The corner at 38th Street and Chicago Avenue, now known unofficially as “George Floyd Square,” had evolved into a community space that people visited from around the world, to pay their respects or simply to say that they had been there. When a jury found the former police officer, Derek Chauvin, guilty of murdering Floyd in April, hundreds of people erupted in cheers outside Cup Foods.
But the intersection had also become an autonomous zone of sorts that the police avoided. Some residents complained that it had become dangerous and detrimental to nearby businesses. Several shootings have erupted in the area.
The city’s decision to open the spot back up to traffic sparked anger among some activists, and hundreds of people flocked to the scene and began replacing the barriers that have halted traffic in a one-block radius around the South Minneapolis intersection.
“I think it’s wrong,” said D.J. Hooker, a community activist who arrived early Thursday after hearing that the memorial was being taken down. “This is not what they should be doing while people are still trying to heal.”
Workers were preserving the artwork and other artifacts that they removed from the corner, a city spokeswoman said, and they left a large, raised fist in the centre of the intersection in place. Sarah McKenzie, the spokeswoman, said the city was working with the Agape Movement, an organisation that has provided security in the area and has worked with the city to improve the relationship between police and residents.