[26][27][28][29] Minneapolis sustained extensive damage from rioting and looting during the protests—largely concentrated on a 5-mile (8.0 km) stretch of Lake Street south of downtown[26]—including the destruction of the city's 3rd police precinct building, which was overrun by demonstrators and set on fire.

[35] By early June 2020, violence in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area had resulted in at least two deaths,[36] 604 arrests, and more than $500 million[7] in damage to approximately 1,500 properties, the second-most destructive period of local unrest in U.S. history, after the 1992 Los Angeles riots.

[42][43][44] On May 2, 2023, the conclusion of the last criminal case for the four Minneapolis police officers responsible for murdering Floyd fulfilled a key demand of protesters that Derek Chauvin, J. Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane, and Tou Thao all be held legally accountable.

[45][46] George Floyd was an unarmed African-American man who died while he was being detained by Minneapolis police on May 25, 2020, shortly after 8:00 p.m. CDT, near the Cup Foods grocery store at the intersection of East 38th Street and Chicago Avenue.

[54] Floyd's murder was also the third in a string of widely reported and highly publicized incidents in which unarmed black Americans were killed in 2020, including Ahmaud Arbery in Glynn County, Georgia on February 23 and Breonna Taylor in Louisville on March 13.

[63] Protesters and Floyd's family called for murder charges for all four officers involved and swift judicial consequences, as the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension also opened an investigation of the incident.

[73][76][68] At 6:32 p.m.,[77] at an AutoZone store located across the intersection from the third police precinct station, a masked man carrying an umbrella and a sledgehammer was recorded on video breaking windows and spray-painting graffiti which encouraged looting.

[4][82] At about 9:49 p.m.,[73] one mile (1.6 km) from the main protest site near the city's third police precinct building, Calvin Horton Jr., a 43-year-old man from Minneapolis, was fatally shot by the owner of the Cadillac Pawn & Jewelry shop who believed he was burglarizing his business.

[26] Observing the events from near Washington, D.C., United States General Joseph L. Lengyel warned other high-ranking Pentagon officials that the situation in Minneapolis could escalate out of control and that the Minnesota National Guard and 200 military police officers should be ready and armed to intervene.

Saint Paul police officers armed with batons and gas masks patrolled the city's busiest commercial corridor and kept looters out of a Target store near University Avenue while other business windows were smashed.

Michael Robert Solomon of New Brighton, a Minneapolis suburb, recruited at least five Boogaloo adherents to join him in Minnesota, including Ivan Harrison Hunter of Boerne, Texas, and Benjamin Ryan Teeter of Hampstead, North Carolina.

[131][133][134][135] At daybreak on May 29, National Guard troops and Minnesota State Patrol officers began clearing people out of the area of the third police precinct station near East Lake Street and Minnehaha Avenue in Minneapolis.

[128] In the late afternoon on May 29, Hennepin County Attorney Michael O. Freeman charged Derek Chauvin, the officer who knelt on Floyd's neck as he died, with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.

The court documents mentioned contributing factors leading up to Floyd's death in addition to the physical trauma of Chauvin's neck restraint, which added to public confusion and anger as the protests intensified.

[144] Law enforcement presence was reportedly "undetectable" as violence in Minneapolis quickly grew until just before midnight, when police officers, state troopers, and members of the National Guard began confronting rioters with tear gas and mass force.

[151] More than 1,000 protesters gathered outside the home of Michael Freeman, the attorney for Hennepin County and initial prosecutor of the four Minneapolis police officers involved in the murder of George Floyd, and caused minor damage to the house.

[155] At approximately 10:53 p.m.[156] on May 30, Jaleel Stallings, a 27-year-old man from Saint Paul, was part of a group of people in a parking lot on East Lake Street between 14th and 15th avenues in Minneapolis who were protecting businesses from looting, in defiance of the curfew order.

[164] Shortly after 6:00 p.m. CDT on May 31, an estimated crowd of 5,000 to 6,000 people gathered on the I-35W bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis and, believing police forces had fully closed the interstate highway after they marched on to it, began taking a knee.

[171] Thousands gathered peacefully at the Minnesota State Capitol building in Saint Paul and marched to the Governor's Residence, calling for police reforms and the prosecution of all four officers who were involved in Floyd's murder.

The service also drew national officials and civil rights leaders, such as Martin Luther King III, Reverends Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, as well as several celebrity figures.

Former NBA basketball player Royce White, a featured speaker at the event that brought civil rights organizations and professional athletes together, called for the resignation of police union president Bob Kroll.

[9] Estimates of property damage in the region were upwards of $500 million,[7] making the local unrest in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul area the second most destructive in United States history, after the 1992 Los Angeles riots.

[32] In the mornings after nights of heavy rioting, hundreds of residents with snow shovels and brooms went to affected areas to clean up trash, graffiti, broken glass, and the remnants of damaged buildings.

[196] Vibrant works of street art later appeared all over the Twin Cities on boarded-up buildings and other surfaces that honored George Floyd's memory, contained racial justice themes, and showed community solidarity.

[205] Jaleel Stallings, who had fired gunshots towards an unmarked vehicle containing police officers on May 30, 2020, was acquitted at trial of an attempted murder charges in 2021 after successfully argued his actions were self defense.

The terminology used to characterize what happened in Minneapolis—"the riots" or "the uprising"—reflected growing political polarization in the United States at the time of Floyd's murder, and implied deeper motives for violent actors during the unrest .

[14] Major areas of civic unrest in Minneapolis and Saint Paul, May 27–29, 2020: George Floyd protests first emerged on May 26, 2020, at the East 38th Street and Chicago Avenue intersection where he was murdered the day prior.

[221][44] After the initial wave of unrest, protestors continued to seek justice for Floyd and made broader calls to address structural racism in Minnesota, with many protest events part of the larger Black Lives Matter movement.

[237][238][239] On May 23, 2021, the Floyd family and civil rights activists led a rally in downtown Minneapolis outside the Hennepin County Government Center building, which was still fortified by fencing installed for the Chauvin trial that concluded a month earlier.

[242] In early 2022, local officials prepared counter-protest measures and for potential unrest ahead of the January 20 schedule start of the federal civil rights trial of Kueng, Lane, and Thao.