ST. PAUL, Minn. – A Minnesota business owner who watched helplessly as his St. Paul establishment was destroyed during the 2020 George Floyd riots spoke to Fox News Digital about how the state, led by Gov. Tim Walz, failed to protect business owners like him.
"When the rioters first came here they went and destroyed the strip mall on the left-hand side here, I was in my shop," Long Her, owner of New Fashion Tailoring and Alteration in St. Paul, Minnesota, told Fox News Digital. "I witnessed everything and videotaped. My friend and I stayed in our shop until nightfall, and I was going to go to sleep and watch over my shop, but my friends said, 'it's too dangerous, let's go home' so we ended up going home that night."
Her, a Hmong immigrant, recalled that he was "afraid" for his livelihood when he went home that night but hoped that the destruction would be contained to the other side of the street.
When Her came back the next morning to check on the store that he had owned for decades, he discovered his worst fears had come true, and the location was ransacked.
MINNESOTA RIOTS CONTINUED AFTER WALZ TOOK ‘RESPONSIBILITY TO ENSURE’ THERE WOULDN’T BE CHAOS
"The next day when I came here to find that my shop was destroyed, as a man, I couldn't do anything but cry," Her told Fox News Digital through translator May Lor Xiong, a Republican running for Congress in Minnesota’s 4th Congressional District.
Her said rioters broke down his reinforced door and stole all the inventory in his store, which represented a dollar amount of $200,000.
"They took down the front door with the metal bars, they had some pliers they used to destroy the metal bars. And they came in there and took everything, took all the clothing, all the merchandise and my store," Her said.
Her told Fox News Digital he tried to contact the police multiple times and received no response. When asked about Gov. Tim Walz’s role in the response taking several days to call in the National Guard, Her said that if Walz is to become vice president, he hopes he has learned from his mistakes in responding to the riot.
"If he gets to become the vice president, he needs to learn how to love the people here and especially Minnesota because of the destruction that happened during his watch," Her said. "He could be a good person, but he also needs to understand the people, the sufferings that they're going through."
Several people who spoke to Fox News Digital said that the twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul still have not fully recovered from the devastating riots that caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage, and Her said it took about two years for his business to financially recover.
"It took me about a year and a half to two years to recover. During that time, a lot of people were scared to go out, and so I lost a lot of customers," Her said. "People are not coming out to shop, and so I lost a lot of money and customers from that."
He went on to say that safety was "not a big concern" for business owners in the twin cities before 2020, but after the pandemic, "there's a lot more people that would shoplift or steal stuff from the store."
"There's a lot of homeless people sleeping in this area. It's making it very unsafe for business owners and even shoppers, and so we need to have more police force to help us in this area, to protect the businesses and the people here."
Minneapolis is widely considered the epicenter of the defund the police movement, and CBS News reported earlier this year that the city’s police department is understaffed by 200 officers and the police force has shrunk by 40% over the last four years.
"I don't care what party they’re from," Her said. "It should be nonpartisan when it comes to the police force and putting more police on the street to help citizens."
Fox News Digital asked Her if he fears that a situation like the 2020 riots could happen again.
"I don't know what's going to happen," Her said. "I hope it won't with the lawlessness right here. The freedom that we have here, we love that. But also, a lot of things might happen, dangerous things that might happen to us and we have already witnessed devastation in 2020."
"We want to make sure that we're prepared, that whoever is in office needs to make sure when something like that happens, they send the National Guard to protect the people, the citizens and the businesses. So that way we do not have to go through such destruction."
