Minneapolis City Council members voted 12-1 on Thursday to rule out rebuilding the burned-out Third Precinct building — still surrounded by razor wire after being abandoned during the civil unrest in 2020 — for use as a police post in the future.
The vote came just days after Mayor Jacob Frey, Council President Andrea Jenkins and other city leaders announced a proposal to house Third Precinct officers at a downtown facility, just outside the borders of the precinct itself, at least for the next few years. City council members also voted unanimously to express their support for that plan.
But the long-term plan for the Third Precinct remains unclear. While residents are deeply divided over where — or whether — to rebuild a police headquarters in southeast Minneapolis, supporters said Thursday that it was clear there was “no political path” for a plan to return officers to the torched shell at Lake Street & Minnehaha Avenue.
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“The one thing my constituents told me is that we need to do this so we can heal and so we can move forward,” said council member Jason Chavez, who called for the vote. “This will help ease the concerns that many of my constituents have, and this will help them to begin to heal once we close this chapter once and for all today.”
RELATED: Minneapolis leaders pitch downtown option for torched Third Police Precinct’s new location
Vice President Linea Palmisano was the lone council member to vote against the idea, saying she feared the motion ruled out stationing some police officers at Lake & Minnehaha as part of an “integrated” team of city employees offering public safety and social services.
“I realistically am not sure that we’ll ever move police back into that location. I don’t really see a world where that’s going to happen” Palmisano said, but added that she wanted to keep the option open. “I don’t see that as just being a redo of the old building,” she added.
Council member Lisa Goodman said integrating police and social services was worth exploring, but doubted that there was any appetite for reusing the Third Precinct building to house such a team.
“And there’s even less of an appetite to have the building sitting there looking like that,” Goodman added, saying the building was an eyesore along a major transit route. “That is an example of failure.”
Yeah the vote said, the citizens of Mpls. lost to the activists, lets demonstrate to those activists that they can tell the majority of folks in Mpls. (66% by the cities own survey) what to do and the city council and mayor will abide by the activists demands!
And when will the wrecking ball arrive?
The eyesore down and a grass field in place by Labor Day…
Goodman correctly notes the building is an etesore. Hopefully this decision means it can be razed & the site used productively.
A lot of people out there shriek that police should ‘live where they work’. 3rd precinct residents don’t even want the police to ‘work where they work’. Confusing.
Probably a good idea seeing their police force is shrinking.
Burn down a police building and then demand they totally remove the burnt out husk because it might upset someone….. You just can’t make this stuff up! The riots caused hundreds of millions in damage, which is not repaired as of now, but many residents in Mpls overlooked the riots as civil unrest. No, it was rioting, looting, burning, stealing and hurting civilians… No justifying that!
Estimates are the response times will increase from the previous 5 minutes to 17 minutes. Oh well, like they say, when seconds count, the police are only 17 minutes away.
There is one “moderate” on the city council?
Although I grew up 2 blocks out of Mpls, I do not live there now. I would say this proposal of keeping police response times as delayed as possible seems incredibly cruel to the residents of that area or areas. I feel sorry for the city and those vulnerable citizens in these 2 precincts – that their city council has that much hatred.
In St Paul we were also invaded in May of 2020 with non St Paulites (see federal prosecutions). The city has done little to remove the eyesores of barren fields and return our wonderful Midway back to the wonderfully diverse neighborhood it once was. Our city simply doe not care. Look at Snelling and University when you have time. Our city does not care.
Those communities, whose leaders demand that the broader tax base (city, county, or state) pay for alternatives they desire, should bear the additional costs of those demands.
I might be reading these announcements incorrectly. In any scenario, the 3rd precinct would be razed and something reborn on its site. Why is there no support for rebuilding the 3rd Precinct on its former site? Rebuilding would send an important message to its South Minneapolis neighbors and constituents that, yes, the 3rd Precinct is back. And there’s a new framework for neighborhood policing that our officers have agreed to, and they are telling us, “a new era of 3rd Precinct policing is happening. right now. right in your neighborhood.” I think this is yet another sad day for Mayor Frey and our Council. Instead of embracing urban policing realities, they are avoiding them. An election is coming up in November; I believe a very different City Council will emerge from that election.
I have lived in Minneapolis for 13 years. Just down Lake Street from the old 3rd precinct building. For the city to surrendered to activists is shameful. The protesters who burned that station were not from the area, Perham not from Minnesota or even Minnesota. They were troublemakers who immediately race to the scene of unrest to stir up trouble.
Build a new police station just of Lake Street on Hiawatha. Situates such that it cannot be accessed easily by attackers on all sides. The entering should be right onto Hiawatha Avenue so police can quickly access this main artery to respond mush faster than any of the proposed locations.
Give no quarter to protesters.
Where are the large “influencers” on this subject..??? Daytons, Medtronics, Cargills, Carlsons, Pohlads, Strib, MN Post, Pioneer Press all can jump on the DEI bandwagon, publicly proclaiming their support for the “progressive” agenda. Is this issue, the safety of Metro citizens, not worthy of support or at least a stated opinion?? The silence is deafening…..
People here are missing the point: the former 3rd precinct site is a massive waste of space. The site makes no sense, in any case: it’s right on the corner of Minnehaha Ave and Lake Street, right near the Blue Line station. A police precinct has no use being near transit – the cops drive everywhere, and no civilian Blur Line rider has any reason to walk to a police precinct.
The city should put something there that people will actually want to go to. I do not mind, as a taxpayer, paying for that. I will never go to a police precinct; why would anyone do that? A community center, or museum, or maybe just more housing… all of these things would be vastly more useful to the general populace. Given Minneapolis’ severe housing crisis, perhaps we should even consider building public housing there. If Vienna makes it work, why can’t we?