Minneapolis Police 3rd Precinct

The Minneapolis Police Third Precinct, at the corner of Lake Street and Minnehaha Avenue in South Minneapolis, stood for decades as a working police station before protests following the murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, made it the most contested address in the city. Officers held the perimeter for three days before abandoning the building on the evening of May 28, when the precinct was set ablaze.

The protests began the day after Floyd's death and grew rapidly around the precinct, which served the neighborhoods most immediately affected by his killing. Officers deployed less-lethal munitions against crowds from the roof and the front entrance. When the Minneapolis Police Department withdrew on the third night, the building burned. It has not been used as a police station since.

In the years that followed, the gutted building sat behind concrete barriers and razor wire as the city debated what to do with the site. The fencing became a surface for graffiti, memorial art, banners, and political demands that shifted with each new episode of tension — the Derek Chauvin trial, the killing of Dolal Idd in January 2021, the killing of Amir Locke in February 2022. Community listening sessions repeatedly surfaced opposition to rebuilding any police facility there at all.

By 2024 the city had settled on a different future for the building. Cleanup began that summer, razor wire came down in the fall, and construction is now underway to convert the former precinct into a Democracy Center housing election services and community space. The Minneapolis Places series has followed the site continuously since the first night of protests.