Minneapolis’ 3rd Police Precinct burned 5 years ago. This is what it looks like now.
Minneapolis’ 3rd Police Precinct still empty 5 years later
Rioters burned the Minneapolis Police Third Precinct three days after George Floyd was killed. It remains derelict five years later. FOX 9's Paul Blume has the full report.
MINNEAPOLIS (FOX 9) - The Minneapolis police precinct that was abandoned during the protests and riots that followed George Floyd’s murder in 2020 is currently being renovated and will soon be re-purposed into an election hub and community center.
Rioters burned a Minneapolis police precinct 5 years ago. It's still empty.
The backstory:
Three days after the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, the crowd outside the 3rd precinct continued to grow. Protests earlier in the week had already escalated into destructive rioting, looting and arson as several businesses were destroyed on Lake Street.
"If you lose a liquor store, you're pretty much in for this for another two or three days," said Bloomington Police Chief Booker Hodges, who helped manage the state’s response to the riots in 2020 as the deputy commissioner of the Department of Public Safety.
The Minneapolis 3rd precinct five years after it was burned.
Fall of 3rd Precinct still ‘incredibly traumatizing’ for Minneapolis police
What they're saying:
Five years later, Hodges still can’t fathom how a heavily guarded precinct could be abandoned.
"I still don't have the words to really accurately describe how I feel about it," Hodges said in an interview this week with FOX 9.
Chief Brian O’Hara, who was the deputy mayor in Newark, New Jersey, at the time, remembers watching the precinct go up in flames on live television.
"Just watching the stuff happening on TV, the fires, the destruction of the city, it was unreal," O’Hara said. "And certainly I never thought I would be here at that time."
When O’Hara took over the department in 2022, he knew officers were still struggling to cope with what had happened.
"It is hard for some of these officers to drive past that old police precinct," O’Hara said. "It is, it has been, incredibly traumatizing."
Dig deeper:
After the fires died down and the rioters were finally repelled, the FOX 9 Investigators reviewed hours of police scanner traffic from that frantic night.
It included a final, somber call from the then police chief, Medaria Arradondo as city leaders ordered police officers to evacuate.
"The 3rd precinct has been compromised," Arradondo said over the radio.
In a recent interview, Arradondo explained what guided his own thinking under such duress.
"I had one goal and that was no more funerals. "I didn't want any loss of life, a civilian life, and I did not want to lose any of my officers from an in the line of duty and so that became my sole focus."
The city’s decision to surrender the precinct led to widespread outrage and after-action reviews that outlined failures in the city and state’s response to the riots.
"I think initially (the city) thought they could deal with it, right, and again I'm not slighting any officers," Hodge said. "These are all leadership decisions and I think it didn't become apparent to them until probably late Wednesday, Thursday, that they needed some assistance with dealing with some of this stuff."
A state-funded audit later found a lack of communication between the city and state delayed the setup of an incident command center as well as confusion as to when the national guard should be brought in to assist.
Hodges acknowledged that widespread fires throughout the twin cities complicated the response efforts.
"For every fire truck that went out, you would have to have police protection for that. And that's a huge resource drain to do that," Hodges said. "So, if you send a couple fire trucks out, how many cops are you gonna have to send because they were shooting at the fire trucks, right? So, the fire piece was something that was difficult to deal with."
Despite those challenges, Hodges says he still can’t understand why the building full of police equipment and evidence was turned over to rioters, and ultimately, looters.
"There's no way I would have (abandoned the building)," Hodges said. "I said it then, and I'll say it now, there's no way."
What's next:
The police precinct is now being renovated and will be turned into a community center and voting hub expected to open next year called the Minneapolis Democracy Center.
A video recently released by the city shows the progress of those renovation efforts, which came after years of debate among city council members and residents.
Police officers assigned to the 3rd precinct have been working out of a temporary location downtown. A new precinct is expected to open in a community safety center on Minnehaha Ave in 2026.