Minneapolis Police Department Deputy Chief Katie Blackwell has brought an ill-advised defamation lawsuit against Liz Collin and Alpha News. I wrote about the lawsuit in “Alpha News goes to court.” Last week MPD Chief Brian O’Hara commented on the lawsuit and us, but specifically or by name, in the Star Tribune opinion column “The truth about the tragic actions of Derek Chauvin.” I judged O’Hara’s column to be the work of a spineless weasel in “O’Hara’s law.”
Minneapolis attorney Chris Madel represents all the defendants sued by Blackwell in the lawsuit. Alpha News has now published Chris’s open letter to the spineless weasel. It begins (links omitted):
Dear Chief O’Hara:
You seem determined to comment on and insert yourself into the defamation lawsuit that Assistant Chief of Police Katie Blackwell brought against my clients—Liz Collin, Alpha News, and JC Chaix. Since you apparently can’t help yourself, here are the facts.
In the criminal trial against Derek Chauvin, Blackwell testified that the Minneapolis Police Department did not train officers to use a knee-on-neck restraint. Blackwell testified that she didn’t recognize Chauvin’s knee-on-neck restraint and that it was an “improvised position.”
Liz’s book, They’re Lying, and her follow-up documentary, The Fall of Minneapolis, showed that the MPD did train officers to use a knee-on-neck restraint, including as part of the maximal restraint technique (MRT) process. We provided numerous pictures of this training to the Court, and more importantly, we provided sworn declarations from 34 MPD officers stating that the MPD trained officers to use knee-on-neck restraints, including as part of the MRT process. Of those, 14 officers declared that Blackwell committed perjury. Nevertheless, Blackwell sued for defamation.
Your latest op-ed not only fails to mention these dozens of MPD officers, but claims Alpha News and Liz are attacking Blackwell. Let’s remember who sued whom here. In the immortal words of Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo, Blackwell drew “first blood.”
You would know this if Blackwell or you showed up for court. You would also know that I told Judge Wahl that the lawsuit has nothing to do with the Chauvin trial and everything to do with the First Amendment. But why let a few facts get in the way of some self-serving opinion piece, right? If I close my eyes, I can see you running your latest disingenuous nonsense over to the Minneapolis City Council’s chambers breathlessly seeking their approval.
Which brings me to my main point. Your choice to ignore the facts relating to the defamation lawsuit is one thing, but when you juxtapose your decision to write that puerile op-ed against Minneapolis’ current conditions, your decision to spend your time writing it is astonishing—and appalling….
Read the whole thing with Chris’s links here.
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