Former MPD officer sues police chief, city for defamation, wrongful termination
Tyler Timberlake is seeking over $250,000 in damages
BY: DEENA WINTER - DECEMBER 22, 2023 4:49 PM
A former Virginia police officer who was hired by the Minneapolis Police Department in January despite being involved in a highly publicized excessive force case is now suing Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara and the city for terminating him.
Tyler Timberlake alleges in the lawsuit that the Minneapolis police chief has repeatedly lied about what he knew about Timberlake’s past before signing off on his hiring.
Just days after Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd by pressing his knee into his neck on a south Minneapolis street, Timberlake, then a Fairfax County police officer, made headlines when he repeatedly used a stun gun on a disoriented, unarmed Black man wandering a residential street. Body camera video shows Timberlake jamming his knee into the man’s back and shoulder while the man said he couldn’t breathe.
Timberlake was later acquitted by a jury of assault and battery, was not formally disciplined and was reinstated to his job.
After the Reformer first reported on Timberlake’s hiring in April, O’Hara released a statement saying he was “extremely concerned” about the hire and ordered a thorough investigation into MPD’s background checks and hiring processes.
Timberlake alleges the chief and city caused the loss of his reputation and career after they “induced” him to resign his job as a Virginia police officer and take a job at MPD, assuring him that the use-of-force case wouldn’t affect his employment.
But he says shortly after his hiring came to light in the press, “those assurances turned to smoke.” He was put on limited duty status and later fired while still on probation, when he had no civil service or union protections.
Timberlake is suing for defamation and wrongful termination, seeking over $250,000 in damages, plus attorney’s fees, reinstatement, back pay and compensatory damages. The suit says he has no job and no prospects, with “his reputation in tatters.”
MPD and O’Hara deferred comment to the City Attorney’s Office, which released a statement saying it is reviewing the complaint.
The lawsuit alleges that “in O’Hara’s panicked efforts to evade responsibility for Timberlake’s hiring, he told a series of lies to the public, including that Timberlake had failed to disclose, or had misrepresented, the incident in Virginia during the hiring process, that O’Hara did not know about the incident in Virginia, (and) that something was wrong with the MPD hiring process because it had failed to identify the incident in Virginia.”
The suit says MPD Officer Craig Johnson fully investigated the Virginia incident, and wrote a summary of his findings in his background report, which was given to hiring personnel.
Timberlake said he disclosed the incident on his MPD application and during “every phase of the overall onboarding process,” offering to provide all video and audio footage of it.
Before being offered a job, he had a final interview on Nov. 8, 2022, in Minneapolis, where he met with O’Hara, Deputy Chief Troy Schoenberger, Chief of Staff Christopher Gaiters, and Human Resources Representative Heather Rende. They discussed the Virginia incident “in great deal,” according to the suit.
Timberlake said he asked O’Hara whether he had any concerns about how he would be treated because of the Virginia case, and O’Hara indicated “he did not care about the prior critical incident, and that if Timberlake is doing the right thing and meeting community expectations, he would not have any problems from the chief.”
Timberlake says he was then offered the job less than 15 minutes after the interview ended, while he was walking to his car. He resigned his job and moved to Minnesota, where he began the job in January.
O’Hara has previously said it was his second day on the job when he sat in on Timberlake’s interview as an “observer,” not a “participant.”
The Reformer first inquired about the hiring on April 12, after which Timberlake alleges O’Hara “began to change his story after media scrutiny,” and wrote in an April 19 internal email that he “was completely and totally unaware of his history.”
Timberlake wrote a May 15 letter to Mayor Jacob Frey, O’Hara and Human Resources Chief Nikki Odom accusing O’Hara of defaming him, and asked for an investigation into the matter.
On July 5, he was summoned to a meeting with Schoenberger and two lieutenants, and was told he was being terminated but not given a reason. Timberlake says he asked if his termination was related to political pressure, and Schoenberger said, “I’m not going to answer that.”
Months later, the city sent Timberlake a memo by O’Hara outlining his reason for the termination, saying Timberlake “engaged in conduct that would not meet our standards when he stepped into another officer’s call, failed to de-escalate, and used unreasonable force during a critical incident.”
O’Hara’s memo said he didn’t know about the conduct prior to viewing a video of it that wasn’t revealed during the hiring process. The chief wrote that he also took into account “concerns raised by community members following the media’s publication of the video.”
Timberlake alleges O’Hara harmed his reputation and defamed him multiple times by implying he concealed the Virginia incident during his background investigation. And he claims O’Hara disclosed information to the public that is supposed to remain private under state law.
He’s seeking compensation for loss of employment, mental distress, humiliation, embarrassment and an inability to find a job afterward “even at police departments that previously expressed interest in working with him.”
Timberlake also claims the city violated the Minnesota Whistleblower Act and he’s entitled to reinstatement, back pay, compensatory damages and the expungement of adverse employment records.
Timberlake gives a detailed description of how and why he responded to the Virginia man the way he did, noting that he was called to a “high-crime area” frequented by a violent felon and PCP user with warrants out for his arrest. Timberlake admits he mistook another man for the felon, and that the man was later found to be under the influence of PCP and cocaine.
After being acquitted by a jury of three counts of misdemeanor assault and battery, Timberlake was reinstated as a police officer in Fairfax County. Their internal affairs unit found he violated their de-escalation policy, and issued a written reprimand. Timberlake appealed the finding, and it was reduced to an oral reprimand, which is not considered formal disciplinary action.
In the lawsuit, Timberlake also says he held the man down by his back and shoulder, not his neck, and disagreed with Chauvin’s “knee-on-neck restraint tactic” on Floyd.
