Opinion editor's note: Editorials represent the opinions of the Star Tribune Editorial Board, which operates independently from the newsroom.
•••
It's worth asking if politics will get in the way of the best long-term solution for public safety when it comes to decisions regarding the Third Precinct police station in Minneapolis.
Last month the City Council voted unanimously to move ahead with a new temporary location for officers whose precinct building was ransacked and burned in the aftermath of George Floyd's murder in May 2020. The Third Precinct will operate from Century Plaza, a city-owned building on the southern outskirts of downtown.
The city was already preparing to move downtown's First Precinct officers to Century Plaza around July 2024; now both precincts will be based there, operating on separate floors.
It took too long to make the decision on the Third Precinct because it got caught up in the larger debate over the role of policing in Minneapolis. City leaders should have made a choice earlier — both to get the officers into an appropriate space and to start work on the blighted site. More than three years is too long to leave the building standing behind fencing and razor wire.
Still, the Century Plaza move is a reasonable short-term solution given the political realities. It also allows city officials to delay a final decision on a Third Precinct site before this year's council elections, in which several of Mayor Jacob Frey's closest allies are in tough races.
Frey told an editorial writer that division on the council made the Century Plaza plan the only option that could get enough votes to proceed. He pointed out his administration had a good potential site lined up within the district in late 2020 but that the landowner pulled out of the deal after being harassed by protesters — some of whom don't want any police in the south Minneapolis neighborhood.
