by Debra Heine
A sobering new documentary aims to debunk the false narratives surrounding the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the trial of Officer Derek Chauvin.
“The Fall of Minneapolis,” produced by Alpha News journalist Liz Collin, also examines the tragic impacts of the Black Lives Matter riots, including the collapse of law and order, that continues to this day.
Before the George Floyd riots, Collin was a popular Emmy-award-winning news anchor for WCCO-TV in Minneapolis.
In 2020, she faced withering criticism over her marriage to Bob Kroll, then the head of the Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis. Collin told talk show host Megyn Kelly on Wednesday that her whole professional world fell apart during that hyper-political time.
“The cancel culture came after me in full force and my husband as well, because of course the police union had to be to blame for all of this,” Collin said.
She left the station in January of 2022 and joined the conservative, Minneapolis-based Alpha News less than a month later.
The film is based on Collin’s Amazon bestseller: “They’re Lying: The Media, The Left, and The Death of George Floyd,” and features more than a dozen interviews with the people involved, including former officers Derek Chauvin and Alexander Kueng, as well as their families.
The movie features new police bodycam footage showcasing Floyd’s erratic behavior the day he died, and argues that Chauvin used the Maximal Restraint Technique (MRT) he was trained to use to restrain Floyd. It also reveals that the police called for EMT backup 36 seconds after Floyd first went on the ground, but the emergency workers were delayed because they initially went to the wrong address.
Judge Peter Cahill did not allow evidence about the MPD-approved Maximal Restraint Technique, the miscommunication between the Fire Dept. and EMS, or Floyd’s previous drug arrests to be used in court.
Court documents released last month revealed that Hennepin County prosecutors faced “extreme pressure” to charge Chauvin and the three other former Minneapolis police officers.
In a deposition regarding an unrelated matter, prosecutor Amy Sweasy divulged a revealing conversation she said she had the day after Floyd’s death when she asked Hennepin County Medical Examiner Dr. Andrew Baker about the autopsy.
“He called me later in the day on that Tuesday and he told me that there were no medical findings that showed any injury to the vital structures of Mr. Floyd’s neck. There were no medical indications of asphyxia or strangulation,” Sweasy said, according to the transcript.
“He said to me, ‘Amy, what happens when the actual evidence doesn’t match up with the public narrative that everyone’s already decided on?’ And then he said, ‘This is the kind of case that ends careers.’”
Floyd’s autopsy report did find that he had potentially fatal levels of Fentanyl and Methamphetamine in his system, and importantly, that he had a bad heart. Baker testified at Chauvin’s trial that Floyd had “very severe underlying heart disease.”
Some medical experts now say he most likely died of “an adrenaline-caused catecholamine crisis leading to bi-lateral heart failure,” investigative journalist Jack Cashill reported this week in the American Spectator.
“Nothing the officers did killed Floyd. Nothing they might have done would have reversed the course of his demise,” said Cashill.
Chauvin reportedly filed a motion in federal court on Monday, asking the judge who presided over his trial to throw out his conviction and order a new trial based on the new evidence.
In the summer of 2020 however, local Democrat leaders and their allies in the media were hellbent on scapegoating the police for political expedience and allowed left-wing activists and anarchists to take over the city, according to the documentary.
Current and former Minneapolis police officers are featured in the film talking, at times tearfully, about how they were forced to stand down when the rioters were burning and looting their way through the city, and how they were forced to face the rioters without riot gear. They said some officers had to escape the 3rd Precinct on foot as it fell to the mob in a scene reminiscent of a zombie movie.
“It was heartbreaking. I think every single person we interviewed for the film broke down,” Collin told Kelly.
Editor and literary consultant Dr. J.C. Chaix directed the crowdfunded movie.
“Hopefully, this documentary will show how politicians and the media desperately ignored even the most basic facts while turning their backs on reasonable doubt and common sense,” Chaix told Alpha News.
The documentary is available for free on Rumble and at TheFallofMinneapolis.com.
Megyn Kelly, whose brother is a retired police officer, devoted her entire YouTube show to the documentary on Wednesday, speaking with Collin and Chaix about the effort, as well as Heather McDonald of the Manhattan Institute.
“I was so troubled as a journalist through all of this,” Collin told Kelly. “They were privy to the information—the truth in all this and they refused to report it. Instead, it was this dangerous narrative they decided to push from day-one.” We are still paying the consequences to this day, she added.
Kelly argued that the George Floyd riots impacted all Americans.
“We’re all living this,” she said. “This case directly led to the increase in crime in major American cities coast to coast.”
Kelly also credited the George Floyd case with the “explosion” of Diversity Equity and Inclusion policies throughout the U.S. “DEI programs in every part of our lives, whether it’s K through 12 education, or corporate America, or sports fields—it’s everywhere!—and it’s all built on a lie!” she exclaimed.
Despite being thrown under the bus, none of the officers interviewed for the film showed any bitterness, least of all Chauvin, who told Chaix that if he had the chance to do it all over again, he would do exactly the same thing, because he wouldn’t want what happened to him to happen to any other officer.
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Debra Heine reports for American Greatness.
Photo “George Floyd Protesters” by Lorie Shaull. CC BY 2.0.
