page_title: George Floyd protests in Minneapolis–Saint Paul
section_title: Surrender of the third precinct station
hierarchical_section_title: George Floyd protests in Minneapolis–Saint Paul / Response / Government actions / Surrender of the third precinct station
caption_attribution_description: English: Minneapolis, Minnesota May 30, 2020 11am 2020-05-30 This content is provided under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. Please don't request other license terms. See the Creative Commons Attribution license details about how you can share, copy, distribute, transmit, remix and adapt this if you give attribution to: Fibonacci Blue
context_page_description: The George Floyd protests in Minneapolis–Saint Paul are an ongoing series of civil unrest that began on May 26, 2020. Protests in Minneapolis, also referred to as the Minneapolis riots or Minneapolis uprising, began as a response to the killing of George Floyd, a 46-year-old African-American man who died on May 25 during an arrest after Derek Chauvin, a Minneapolis Police Department officer, knelt on Floyd's neck for nearly eight minutes as three other officers looked on. Unrest spilled over into Saint Paul, other locations in the Twin Cities metropolitan region, and throughout the U.S. state of Minnesota. Floyd's death and local unrest inspired a global protest movement against police brutality and racial inequality.
  The vast majority of protests in Minneapolis–Saint Paul were peaceful. However, over a three-night period from May 27 to May 29, Minneapolis sustained extraordinary damage from rioting and looting—largely along a 5-mile stretch of Lake Street south of the city's downtown—including the demise of the city's third police precinct, which was overran and set on fire by demonstrators after police forces retreated.
context_section_description: Built in 1985, the third precinct station in south Minneapolis was overrun by protesters and officially lost on Thursday, May 28, 2020. It is a matter of debate whether the decision by city officials to abandon it helped save lives or inspired more violence. Arradondo, Frey, and other city leaders prepared as early as Wednesday, May 27 for the possibility of surrendering the station, which had been the location of tense protests beginning the evening of Tuesday, May 26, a day after Floyd's arrest and death.
  According to Frey, after the precinct building was breached the city faced the choice of hand-to-hand combat with demonstrators that could result in more death, or forces could make a hasty departure and leave the building to the crowd, the latter of which happened in dramatic fashion as it was captured on live video. The image of an abandoned police station being set on fire by demonstrators was said to symbolize the collapse of order in Minneapolis and the failure of the police's relationship with the community. The precinct had a reputation over the preceding years for what the community considered aggressive policing by officers. One protester said of watching the station burn that it felt like therapy after years of contention following the killing of metro area residents, including several black men, by police officers.
  Hennepin County officials estimated the cost to replace the police station, either at the prior location or at a new location, was $10 million.
caption: The destroyed third precinct station in Minneapolis,  May 30, 2020.
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