14 current and former Minneapolis cops say Assistant Chief Katie Blackwell LIED during trial of Derek Chauvin

A group of 14 current and former Minneapolis Police Department Officers signed sworn declarations attesting to their belief that Assistant Chief Katie Blackwell committed perjury during the trial of Derek Chauvin over the death of George Floyd on May 25, 2020. Blackwell testified that the method of restraint used by Chauvin was not part of MPD officer training. Blackwell had said at the trial “that’s not what we train.”

However, others say that the “knee-on-neck restaint Chauvin employed was trained under the maximal-restraint technique (MRT), a restraint the MPD taught and allowed until 2023.” The officers who signed the declarations “swore that this training was well known—indeed, common knowledge—and omnipresent,” Alpha News said.

Reporting on the declarations, Alpha News said that these 14 statements “were among dozens of declarations submitted by lawyers representing Alpha News in a defamation lawsuit brought by Blackwell last October against Alpha News, Alpha News reporter Liz Collin, producer J.C. Chaix, and a publishing company.” Blackwell brought suit against Alpha News in response to their documentary “The Fall of Minneapolis,” which indicated that Blackwell had not been truthful in her testimony.

In a lengthy motion asking for the case to be dismissed with prejudice, attorney for Alpha News Chris Madel wrote “With this motion, 33 former MPD officers who served with Blackwell, and one who currently serves with her, have sworn that MPD trained this restraint as part of the ‘maximal-restraint technique’ (‘MRT’) and otherwise. Indeed, 14 of these officers have sworn—under oath—their belief that Blackwell perjured herself.”

“Blackwell remarkably claims that Collin and Chaix defamed her when they opined that it ‘seemed’ like Blackwell lied. In reality, this opinion was far more generous than necessary. It is a fact,” the motion further reads.

Floyd died in police custody after he was arrested in a parking lot on that fateful day in May 2020. Chauvin restrained him and Floyd later died. His death was deemed by the court of public opinion to be a racially motivated murder and within two days of his death, as cell phone footage of the arrest circulated online, riots began in Minneapolis and quickly spread across the country.

Floyd’s death was about 10 weeks into the Covid-19 pandemic which inspired local government leaders to insist on lockdowns, business, school and church closures. The riots began at the tail end of a spring as weather turned warm after the winter months. In many areas, lockdowns were still imposed except in the case of protests. Dozens of doctors signed a letter claiming that racism was a bigger health threat than Covid and that those who were out protesting were in the right. Anyone who wasn’t protesting for racial justice was told to stay home and churches, schools, and businesses remained closed.

In Minneapolis, riots were so bad that the MPD relinquished a precinct building to the mob. Former MPD officer Ken Tidgwell, Alpha News noted, said “that he nearly lost a leg from an injury he sustained furing the riots that followed Floyd’s death.” He said that he had been trained to use the technique Chauvin employed when subduing Floyd. A toxicology report later revealed that Floyd had Fentanyl and other drugs in his system. 

“Specifically, we were trained that when two officers were trying to handcuff a person that was resisting arrest, one officer should use his or her knee to employ a knee-to-neck/upper shoulder restraint to control the subject’s head, and the other knee should be used to control one of the subject’s arms during handcuffing,” Tidgwell said. 

“If by ‘we’ Katie Blackwell referred to the MPD,” Tidgwell said, “then I believe that she perjured herself. Every MPD officer knows that restraint was trained, and every MPD officer knows it was trained as part of the MRT process. We were trained that ‘where the head goes, the body will follow.'”

Chauvin’s trial was one in which he was publicly believed to be guilty before he was tried. Chauvin has appealed his conviction, in which he was found guilty of second-degree unintentional murder, guilty of third-degree murder and guilty of second-degree manslaughter in the death of George Floyd. At the time, President Joe Biden commented on the verdict, saying that he prayed that the verdict is the “right verdict, which is I think it’s overwhelming in my view. I wouldn’t say that unless the jury was sequestered now, not hearing me say that.”

Chauvin’s appeal has been allowed to go forward despite opposition from the Biden administration’s Department of Justice. U.S. District Court Judge Paul Magnuson in December “ordered that Chauvin’s lawyers be allowed access to Floyd’s heart tissue and histology slides, photographs of his heart and samples of Floyd’s bodily fluids, as his legal team is investigating the possibility that Floyd died from a heart condition and not Chauvin’s actions.”