MINNEAPOLIS (CN) — The Minneapolis City Council emerged from two nights of curfews to delay approval of a lease for a temporary site for the city’s Third Precinct police station, after its former location was burned down during protests following the death of George Floyd.
The council was scheduled to sign off Friday morning on a $1.2 million per year lease for a onetime print shop a few blocks north of the precinct’s original location. After outcry from activists and neighbors, however, the council voted to send the conversation back to a committee to further examine community impacts of using the building.
The abandonment and destruction of the Third Precinct – for which the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms and Tobacco charged a white man from the state’s rural north – was a turning point for the riots following Floyd’s May 25 death in police custody.
The long-term fate of the controversial precinct is still in flux. The city has estimated that it will cost some $10 million to rebuild, and councilmember Alondra Cano, who represents the ward where the precinct is located, has opposed rebuilding on that site.
The officers of the Third Precinct have been operating out of the Minneapolis Convention Center in the city’s downtown. That situation, councilmembers noted, isn’t cheap either.
“The impromptu headquarters that were created at the convention center come with certain costs, and come with certain operating challenges,” Cano said Friday. “Some people have framed this conversation as a ‘defund the police’ initiative when I believe that we are actually spending more money housing the police at the convention center than we would if we moved them to a different building.”
The lease was approved by the city’s Policy and Government Oversight Committee on Aug. 20, and councilmember Cam Gordon, a member of the committee, recommended that the council return it for more community input and analysis of its racial equity impacts.
Discussing the idea with community groups, Gordon said, revealed that many in the area of the proposed location were anxious about the idea.
“It became clearer and clearer to me all along that way… that people weren’t ready for this idea right now,” he said. “As I brought this issue forward to people I could see their eyes opening and their jaws dropping, and then I could hear their stories about the embers dropping in their backyard.”
“It just became a theme that we really need more time,” he added.
The council supported Gordon’s motion unanimously, but with many members saying they supported the lease.
“We do have to recognize the humanity of our employees who help to keep our city safe,” Vice President Andrea Jenkins said. “And certainly, there has been much controversy and consternation around the Minneapolis Police Department, but at the end of the day they are our employees and deserve a safe and suitable work environment so that they can provide the best level of safety to our community.”
The lease would make the precinct one of a very few displaced organizations in Minneapolis with its own new space. In the months since the initial riots were suppressed by police and the National Guard, businesses and communities in the area have struggled to rebuild and reckon with the aftermath even as protests continue.
Minneapolis and the neighboring capital city of St. Paul suffered over $500 million in damage between May 25 and the conclusion of the riots late the next week. Some 1,500 buildings were burned or otherwise damaged across both cities, most commercial and concentrated on Lake Street in south Minneapolis and University Avenue in St. Paul’s Midway neighborhood.