Ahead of the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd, leaders of the city’s Black community fear the worst. In the area around George Floyd Square, which is the intersection where he was killed, violent crime shot up 66 percent last year, according to the Minneapolis Police Department. The area has been largely abandoned by police who have sought not to spark new tensions, which has created a vacuum in terms of security. But Pastor Brian Herron of Zion Baptist Church told the New York Times that the failure to convict the man who knelt on Floyd’s neck while he begged for mercy would set off a new round of protests in the country. “People don’t have much faith that he’s going to be convicted,” Herron, whose church is in the historic heart of Black Minneapolis, told the paper. “I think there’s hope that he is, but we have seen this movie before. We’ve watched this movie over and over and over again. We can recite the lines.”
