“It was around 4:00 am when eight people broke my window before stealing nearly $ 50,000 from me.” Eddy Le Garrec is very angry. Patron of Empire State of Wine, a wine cellar located in the Flatiron District (111 W 20th St), the Frenchman woke up like many other business owners in the city with a hangover this Monday, June 1 . “Our surveillance cameras filmed everything. What made me the craziest was that the police were there, but they did not move ”, explains Eddy Le Garrec, who on Monday afternoon was still waiting for the police to come and see the damage in his shop.
The United States has been the scene of anti-racism demonstrations since May 25, the date of the death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old African American who died of asphyxiation by a white police officer in Minneapolis. In New York, peaceful demonstrations took place during the day Saturday and Sunday, before giving way to riots and looting at night.
A dozen luxury stores were notably hit at SoHo on the night of Saturday to Sunday, including two French: Louis Vuitton (116 Greene St) and Chanel (139 Spring St). Le Fournil, a French bakery in East Village (115 2nd Ave), which opened a few months ago, was also “abyss”Saturday evening as its owner Jean-François Hébert explained on Instagram on Sunday. “I thank our neighbors for standing guard and trying to protect the bakery”, He said before adding that Le Fournil was going to partially reopen on Monday.
Worried that the looting will continue this week, Eddy Le Garrec will close his wine cellar and barricade it. “The mayor and the police do nothing. You have to send the army before the gangs arrive ”. More than 250 people were arrested Sunday evening by New York police. A multitude of videos on social networks show the police’s intervention during the looting:
NYPD deals with looters caught red-handed when they were inside a Soho shoe store. pic.twitter.com/A8ao8Uk31N
– Faytuks News 🔴 (@Faytuks) June 1, 2020
Monday morning, Mayor Bill de Blasio also announced the implementation of a curfew from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. and the deployment of 4,000 additional police officers.
