EXCLUSIVE: 5 years later: Justice after George Floyd? The dismissed lawsuit revealing the truth—and Derek Chauvin’s response
(Original article by Alpha News, Dr. JC Chaix May 20, 2025)
In an exclusive phone call from prison, Chauvin himself said then-Inspector Katie Blackwell's testimony was "outright perjury."
When a police chief doesn’t want you to look at police body camera videos, then you know you need to look beyond the lies and see the facts for yourself. From the very beginning, many of our so-called leaders misspoke and misjudged what was necessary to keep the peace and let justice truly prevail in Minneapolis.
Following the arrest and heart attack of George Floyd, police bodycam videos were withheld. Lawyers engaged in lawfare, and riots, protests and politics made any hope of a fair and impartial trial for the four accused officers nothing more than an impossibility.
Even now, after a defamation lawsuit filed by the assistant chief of the Minneapolis Police Department has been dismissed, police leaders, politicians and the media are still warning all of us about trying to “rewrite history” by telling the facts. But we believe the facts should always speak for themselves.
On the stand in former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin’s state trial, both former Police Chief Medaria Arradondo and since-promoted Assistant Police Chief Katie Blackwell said they either did not recognize the technique that Chauvin and the officers deployed on Floyd, or that it was not trained by the Minneapolis Police Department.
“I don’t know what kind of improvised position that is. So that’s not what we trained,” Blackwell said under oath.
Is this a trained Minneapolis Police Department defensive tactics technique?
“It is not,” former Chief Arradondo (aka “Chief Rondo”) said on the stand.
“When I heard that part of the testimony, I really wanted to get up off my chair and yell bullshit,” Carolyn Pawlenty, Derek Chauvin’s mother, said in “The Fall of Minneapolis.”
“I heard our police chief say on the stand that he didn’t recognize that technique. I heard him say that. It’s tough to hear people lie. Just straight lie,” retired Lt. Lindsay Herron said in the documentary as well.
Former Minneapolis police officers speak out
In the final installment of a three–part series, Alpha News senior reporter Liz Collin spoke with former Minneapolis police officers to get their perspectives. Retired Minneapolis police officer Bill Kenow weighed in on the trial testimony of Arredondo and Blackwell.
“I know that I was trained in it. It was a huge thing that we did. ‘Where the head goes, your body follows,’ we always would say that, and that was part of our testimony. We did it over and over and over for years and to hear, like the chief said … and Katie … when she said that, I’m like, how can you say that? I mean, this is what we all did,” Kenow told Collin.
“We were trained in it over and over and over. And I’ve done that technique numerous times, both in training and on the street,” he added.