MPD leader to pay $75,000 in attorney fees to ‘Fall of Minneapolis’ creators after losing lawsuit

Assistant Minneapolis Police Chief Katie Blackwell has accepted the dismissal of her defamation lawsuit against the creators of “The Fall of Minneapolis” and, in doing so, has agreed to pay their attorneys’ fees totaling $75,000.

The first $50,000 was paid earlier this week to the Minneapolis law firm Madel PA; the second payment of $25,000 is due by Sept. 3.

A signed declaration by Blackwell attached to the settlement agreement obtained by the Minnesota Star Tribune states that everything in Hennepin County Judge Edward Wahl’s order dismissing her lawsuit last month was “accurate, true and correct.” Both parties are released from any future legal proceedings against each other related to the lawsuit.

Blackwell, the Police Department’s No. 2 ranking officer, had argued that her testimony in the state and federal trials of Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd was manipulated in the documentary and Liz Collin’s book “They’re Lying: The Media, The Left, And The Death of George Floyd.”

The book and documentary argued that Blackwell lied on the witness stand by saying that a photo of Chauvin with his knee on Floyd’s back was not departmental policy. Blackwell was called by prosecutors as an expert witness because she had served as the commander of the training division.

The film used about 30 seconds of her 38-minute testimony from the state trial of Chauvin.

Blackwell believed the way her testimony was presented was done with actual malice to make her appear as a liar and that it “clouded” her career. Her lawsuit sought more than $50,000 in damages from Alpha News and Collin, its star reporter, along with Collin’s publishing company Paper Birch Press and director J.C. Chaix.

Attorney Chris Madel was hired by the defendants. He argued they were well within their First Amendment rights to make those claims against Blackwell, and those rights were further augmented by Minnesota’s new Uniform Public Expression Protection Act (UPEPA).

That piece of legislation is meant to limit frivolous lawsuits that seek to undermine the public discourse.

In court filings, Madel included sworn declarations from 33 former MPD officers who served with Blackwell and an officer still on staff. Those officers alleged that the restraint used by Chauvin on Floyd was part of department training. Fourteen of the officers also alleged Blackwell committed perjury when she testified at Chauvin’s criminal trial.

In dismissing the lawsuit, Wahl examined the high legal threshold a public figure needs to overcome to prove defamation and determined the book and documentary presented protected opinions, not “defamatory statements of fact.”

He said that while people who watched the livestream of Chauvin’s trial and heard Blackwell’s testimony about use of force and police policies “might reasonably conclude that Collin’s and Alpha News’s characterizations of some of Blackwell’s statements were misleading or taken out of context,” it is not the same as hitting the legal standard of showing “actionable defamatory statements” or that the defendants acted with “actual malice.”

Wahl also said the defendants’ argument that Blackwell lied on the witness stand when she said Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s back was “not what we train” met the legal standard of “substantial truth.”

“Her answer reasonably invites viewers, jurors, and now the public to conclude that the depicted technique was never trained by MPD,” the judge wrote. “That impression is undermined by evidence in the record showing that MPD training materials from 2018-2019 — the period of Blackwell’s tenure — included images of officers applying knees to the neck or upper back.”

After the opinion was issued, Madel said, “This is a complete vindication for Liz Collin, J.C. Chaix and Alpha News and a complete victory for the First Amendment.”

Blackwell’s attorneys issued a statement that said they respected the court but the ruling raises constitutional questions around UPEPA, which was signed into law in 2024. They also said anyone who watched Chauvin kneel on Floyd’s back for more than 10 minutes as he died and believes Chauvin was following MPD policy has “lost more than their moral compass, they have lost their common sense.”

Collin told the Star Tribune last month that Blackwell had targeted her reputation.

“There is no worse thing as a 20-plus-year journalist than to be called a liar; that’s what she was doing to me,” Collin said. “That’s a pretty big insult. If there is one thing I’ve cared about since the very start of my career, it’s facts, information, conveying that fairly to the public.”