Fourteen current and former police officers with the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) have signed sworn declarations which say they believe MPD Assistant Chief Katie Blackwell perjured herself when testifying in former MPD officer Derek Chauvin’s murder trial.
Specifically, the group of former officers say they believe Blackwell perjured herself when she testified in court that the restraint method Chauvin used to subdue George Floyd in May 2020 was not a part of MPD officer training. In that trial, Chauvin was found guilty of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter. He was sentenced to 22 years in prison.
However, many say the knee-on-neck restraint Chauvin employed was trained under the maximal-restraint technique (MRT), a restraint the MPD taught and allowed until 2023.
Those 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. In her lawsuit, Blackwell alleged that the Alpha News documentary film The Fall of Minneapolis and a book authored by Collin wrongly accused Blackwell of lying.
This week, lawyers for Alpha News filed a 113-page motion with 592 footnotes to have the case dismissed with prejudice.
“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,” wrote attorney Chris Madel in this week’s motion.
These officers, according to the motion, “swore that this training was well known—indeed, common knowledge—and omnipresent.”
https://alphanews.org/over-a-dozen-current-and-former-officers-say-they-believe-mpds-katie-blackwell-perjured-herself-during-derek-chauvin-trial/