What we know about Katie Blackwell, the new acting police chief in Minneapolis

Paul Walsh, The Minnesota Star Tribune on May 27, 2026

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MINNEAPOLIS — Mayor Jacob Frey has turned to a longtime Minneapolis Police Department leader to step in as acting police chief, someone who largely worked behind the scenes until George Floyd’s murder by officer Derek Chauvin in 2020 thrust her and the city into the global spotlight.

During his news conference Tuesday night announcing the forced resignation of Brian O’Hara as police chief, Frey said that Assistant Chief Katie Blackwell is his choice to be acting chief “effective immediately.”

The mayor said he has “full confidence that she will provide stability, continuity and strong leadership for the department during this transition [and] work to build a department that is effective, that is accountable and worthy of the public’s trust. ... The acting chief, Blackwell, is up for the job.”

While Blackwell fills in for an uncertain length of time, Frey said the city will embark on a thorough search for a permanent chief in hopes of finding a nominee who will secure City Council confirmation.

Blackwell, 46, is a Minneapolis native and longtime senior leader in the Police Department. O’Hara appointed her in August 2023 to the newly created position of assistant chief overseeing daily operations, including patrols and investigations.

She became a sworn MPD officer in 2002 and rose quickly through the ranks, serving as the Fifth Precinct inspector until being tapped for O’Hara’s command staff. In her new role as his No. 2, Blackwell often made daily operations decisions and spoke for the department in his absence.

Her time in an MPD uniform had been largely without fanfare until the 2021 televised state murder trial of Chauvin. She was a prosecution expert on police training called on to assess how the officer kept Floyd pinned to the pavement for several minutes until he drew his last breath.

While testifying, Blackwell was shown a photo from the viral video of Chauvin on Floyd’s neck and was asked whether officers are taught that tactic. She replied, “I don’t know what kind of improvised position this is. So that’s not what we train.”

Blackwell later testified at Chauvin’s federal trial that several aspects of police conduct in the killing of Floyd went against department regulations including: Chauvin keeping his knee on Floyd’s neck; the continued restraint of Floyd after he stopped resisting; the failure to provide aid to Floyd once he became unresponsive; and the failure of other officers at the scene to intervene in the use of excessive force.

Her testimony prompted allegations in a book and documentary that Blackwell lied on the witness stand by saying that Chauvin’s actions were not department policy.

Blackwell sued for defamation against the creators of “The Fall of Minneapolis,” arguing that her testimony in Chauvin’s trials was manipulated in the Alpha News documentary and Liz Collin’s book “They’re Lying: The Media, The Left, and The Death of George Floyd.”

However, in April 2025, a historic First Amendment court ruling was a factor in the dismissal of Blackwell’s lawsuit and required her to pay Alpha News’ and Collin’s attorneys fees totaling $75,000.

“None of the statements Blackwell challenges are defamatory as a matter of law, given the well-established caselaw assessing commentary by media figures on matters of high public interest involving limited-purpose public figures,” Hennepin County Judge Edward Wahl wrote in his order. “In her role as a key government witness in a high-profile prosecution, Blackwell assumed the status of a limited-purpose public figure under longstanding First Amendment jurisprudence.”

For 28 years, Blackwell was a member of the Minnesota National Guard and served as a senior military police sergeant until December 2025.

Maj. Andrea Tsuchiya, public affairs officer for the Minnesota National Guard, said Blackwell was deployed to Bosnia from 2003 to 2004 and to Iraq from 2005 to 2007.

At the time of her retirement, the major added, Blackwell was the command sergeant major of the 84th Troop Command in Cambridge.