Katie Blackwell is the high-ranking Minneapolis Police Department administrator who arguably perjured herself in her testimony in the Derek Chauvin murder trial in the death of George Floyd. With the resignation of MPD Police Chief Brian O’Hara for alleged sexual improprieties, Blackwell finds herself acting chief.
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Many Americans recall the photo of Chauvin, apparently kneeling on Floyd’s neck. What the camera angle of that photo didn’t reveal was that he was actually kneeling on Floyd’s shoulder and upper back, a technique taught, sanctioned, and used for decades by the MPD. In fact, the local coroner determined the technique had nothing to do with Floyd’s death:
On May 26, 2020, Senior Assistant Hennepin County Attorney Patrick Lofton documented a via Microsoft Teams on the cause of Floyd’s death. Hennepin County Medical Examiner Andrew Baker told the participants, who included four FBI agents, ‘The autopsy revealed no physical evidence suggesting that Mr. Floyd died of asphyxiation. Mr. Floyd did not exhibit signs of petechiae, damage to his airways or thyroid, brain bleeding, bone injuries or internal bleeding.’ In sum, there was no evidence of a homicide.
Under intense racial and political pressure, he changed his tune to cover Floyd’s actual cause of death from fatal levels of illicit drugs and internal damage from decades of drug abuse. Floyd was a violent, convicted felon who once held a gun to a pregnant woman’s stomach during a home invasion robbery.
Despite no fewer than 34 MPD officers testifying that the restraint technique was taught, routinely used, and MPD-sanctioned, and despite photographic and textual evidence from MPD training manuals, photographs of officers applying it in training, and even a photograph of Blackwell applying it in the field, Blackwell testified that the technique was never taught or sanctioned. That testimony was necessary to provide cover for a pre-determined verdict.
Liz Collin of Alpha News produced the film “The Fall of Minneapolis,” which exposed Blackwell’s perjury. Blackwell sued Alpha News and Collin for defamation. It didn’t go well for Blackwell:
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Minneapolis attorney Chris Madel represented the defendants Blackwell has sued. We asserted every applicable defense including truth and the First Amendment. Sources and references for the film are here. Chris also introduced the declarations of 34 Minneapolis police offers specifically refuting Blackwell’s testimony regarding the knee-on-neck restraint.
Why is this single point in the Chauvin case so important? Police officers accused of using excessive force have a defense if they’re using techniques trained for and sanctioned by their agencies. That fact, combined with the coroner’s original conclusions and the political pressure applied that forced him to change those conclusions, should have been enough to vindicate Chauvin and the other officers. But their trials were political farces with predetermined verdicts, carried out under threat of mob violence. Blackwell’s perjury was instrumental in upholding the lie, but it didn’t last:
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Judge Wahl granted defendants’ motion to dismiss the case. I have embedded his scrupulous 58-page order below [take the link]. It was a good day for independent journalism in Minnesota and a bad day for the Minneapolis Police Department. At the end of the day, as they say, Blackwell agreed to resolve her exploding cigar of a lawsuit by paying attorneys’ fees of $75,000.
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This alone should, at the very least, secure a new trial, if not complete exoneration for Chauvin and the other officers, but Minneapolis and the Minnesota establishment remain staunchly leftist and have a vested interest in maintaining the lie, as Liz Collin put it:
I asked Liz Collin for a comment at the time of Judge Wahl’s dismissal of Blackwell’s lawsuit. Liz wrote: “My reporting has always been about getting the facts and speaking the truth. And I think the dismissal of this case says a lot about what I’ve been saying for quite some time about how the media and so-called leaders have handled the arrest and death of George Floyd: they’re lying.”
The convictions of Chauvin and the other officers played a major role in the MPD to lose 40% of its officers. Qualified candidates won’t have anything to do with the MPD.
As with all too many leftists, Blackwell has failed upward. Whether, in light of the outcome of Blackwell’s lawsuit, she’s able to retain her position is yet to be seen. Unfortunately, perjury in the furtherance of Minnesota’s Communist/Islamist orthodoxy remains the status quo.
Derek Chauvin, who was nearly killed in a jailhouse stabbing, languishes in prison.
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Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer, and high school and college English teacher. He is a published author and blogger. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.
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