Store That Called Cops on George Floyd Threatens to Sue Minneapolis Mayor Frey Over Autonomous Zone

The owner of Cup Foods in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the grocery store that called police in May after George Floyd allegedly attempted to use a counterfeit $20 bill during a purchase has threatened to sue Mayor Jacob Frey and city council over the establishment of an “autonomous zone” that he says is hurting businesses in the area.

According to KSTP, in early June, cement barricades went up around a four-square-block area surrounding the George Floyd Memorial at East 38th Street and Chicago Avenue and those barriers are still in place.

Jamar Nelson, a spokesperson for the store, said that “They want the barriers down and they want them down yesterday. Cup Foods and other businesses are losing tens of thousands of dollars every month because crime has gone up inside the area that’s blocked off and customers do not feel as safe coming in there as they once did.”

Nelson said Cup Foods and other business owners in the area want to have a dialogue with Mayor Jacob Frey and the Minneapolis City Council to come up with a plan to start removing the barricades immediately.

“They cannot continue to watch crime rise in the blocked off area with their eyes wide shut. If they do not do something and do it quickly, those stores and businesses will be gone because they will get fed up and just leave,” Nelson believes.

The attorney for the owner of Cup Foods said in a letter to Frey and the City Council, the “city had created a lawless zone” and businesses have suffered real financial losses as a result of the city’s “negligence.”

The employee who called the police on Floyd spoke with Slate and said he had barely interacted with Floyd the night he was killed. “He just came in, said, ‘What’s up?’ to me, before everything happened. He came to all the employees, was saying ‘hi’ to everybody. CUP Foods is usually like that,” he described.

Malik told Slate that after Floyd paid and left, a clerk passed the bill he used through a machine that identified it as fake and another teenage employee confronted Floyd outside the store.

Then, according to Malik, Floyd refused to return the items he had purchased and cursed them out—“basically trying to be extra on them,” as Malik put it.

As the other teenager returned to the store, Malik said the employee told him to call 911 and Malik told the 911 operator that “He [Floyd] is sitting on his car cause he’s awfully drunk. He’s not in control of himself.”