Wednesday marks the fifth anniversary of when Black Lives Matter rioters and Antifa militants, angry over the death of George Floyd, attacked Minneapolis' 3rd Police Precinct and the officers defending it. What was different about that day in 2020 is how the vastly outnumbered officers were ordered to evacuate the precinct instead of being reinforced.

The rioters gained new energy at the sight of the retreating officers, many of whom had to run on foot because there were not enough vehicles to transport them out of the area. With the minimal police presence now gone, the mob broke into the police station, looted it, and set the building on fire.

It was a moment that had not been seen in recent U.S. history. The police station in Ferguson, Missouri, during the BLM riots was not evacuated or burned. There is no record of such drastic action taking place at any of the Los Angeles Police Department stations during the 1992 riots.

Three Minneapolis police officers who are still with the department have bravely stepped forward to speak with Blaze News and give their account of what happened that night and what they have seen in the five years since the riots. They agreed to be interviewed anonymously to avoid retaliation from the department or the city.

"That first three days, I mean even afterwards, there was little to no direction from our admin. and/or our command. We were self-deploying or making our own plans to do whatever we could to be effective and try to maintain some sort of semblance of order," one of the officers recalled.

Watch the officers' interview here:

The officers who were interviewed said they felt betrayed by the decision to evacuate the 3rd Precinct because they had spent days being attacked by the crowd. In their view, the precinct could have been held if they had been given reinforcements. Mayor Jacob Frey (D) has defended his decision to give the evacuation order because he did not believe holding the building was worth the risk of an officer or a rioter being killed.

"It was extremely frustrating," another officer said about city leadership's decisions. "I feel like a lot of people that were on the ground directly with us were making good calls, but it was the people higher up that were making really bad calls, which made [our response] difficult."

The officer pointed to how leadership did not like the optics of police being on the roof of the 3rd Precinct with 40mm less-than-lethal launchers, which are used on rioters who are attacking officers, so leadership ordered them off the roof. As soon as they were off the roof, the crowd became more violent and got closer to the building, so the officers were ordered back up.

The Minneapolis officers retreating sent a message to rioters across the country that if they had the numbers and were violent enough, they could have a chance to burn police stations. Another such attempt was made on the 5th Precinct. In Seattle, then-Mayor Jenny Durkan (D) ordered her officers to leave the city's East Precinct after days of rioters attacking officers there.

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Photo (left): © Ralf-Finn Hestoft/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images; Photo (right): ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images

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The impact of the lawlessness five years ago is still being felt on the streets. The officers say it is getting increasingly harder to do their jobs effectively, which has led to mass exodus from the Minneapolis Police Department.

"I've had friends come up to me or family members come up to me that say, 'We need more cops like you.' My response, if I ever hear a comment like that, is always, 'There are. The department is full of them. Certainly was full of them at that time.' We lost an unacceptable number of great cops, of great sergeants, lieutenants, leaders," one officer said.

It remains to be seen whether Minneapolis can fully recover from the devastation.

You can watch the full documentary on BlazeTV.

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