High-ranking Minneapolis Police Department officer sues Liz Collin, Alpha News for defamation

Blackwell also stated that what Chauvin did to Floyd was not the maximal restraint technique that the department trains officers to use.

Collin’s book and film accused Blackwell of lying, and several of those moments are highlighted in the lawsuit, including three excerpts from the book which state that “it doesn’t seem like Inspector Blackwell knows how MPD officers are trained — or maybe she was lying.” Another that questions whether she, former Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo and Minneapolis Police Lt. Johnny Mercil were telling the truth, and another instance where the book argues that Blackwell and other experts for the prosecution were “lying by omission, if not lying outright.”

In “The Fall of Minneapolis,” one of Collin’s major arguments is that witnesses for the prosecution lied about the department’s training around maximal restraint technique and that was used to convict Chauvin.

Blackwell argues in her lawsuit that maximal restraint technique was taught by the Minneapolis Police Department, but says it was not the technique that Chauvin used to kill Floyd.

The lawsuit points to a clip of Blackwell testifying that the technique used by Chauvin was not part of department training. The film then cuts to a scene of Collin interviewing Carolyn Pawlenty, Chuavin’s mother, and saying that “several witnesses” testified that maximal restraint technique “was not a part of Minneapolis Police policy.”

The lawsuit argues that “this statement conveys the impression that Blackwell herself testified to that effect, which is plainly untrue.”