Nine people were shot in Minneapolis on Tuesday evening amid a spate of violence following the death of George Floyd.
Shootings have risen sharply in the city over three weeks of unrest after Floyd, an African American man, was killed by police officers in Minnesota. Since May 26, 66 people have been shot in the city, comprising 45 percent of all shooting victims in Minneapolis for this year.
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The Tuesday shootings follow an incident on Sunday in which seven people were shot during a bar fight. One of the victims of the bar shooting has since died.
No arrests have been made in any of the recent shootings.
It does not appear that the shootings are connected to protests over Floyd’s death. Those protests turned violent in some instances, with rioters setting fire to Minneapolis’s third police precinct building as well as numerous businesses.
The Minneapolis City Council has estimated that damages to buildings from the riots amount to at least $55 million. However, the council warned that the damages could be much higher, and Mayor Jacob Frey has said damages could reach “hundreds of millions of dollars.”
Floyd’s death has driven calls by Black Lives Matter activists to defund police departments. Representative Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.), whose district encompasses the city, has supported calls to defund the Minneapolis police, calling the department “beyond repair.”
Mayor Frey has resisted the push to dismantle the city’s police department, although the Minneapolis City Council has signed a pledge to dismantle the department.
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