#Marion Kansas newspaper

[meteorologistaustenlonek]

(47 exclamation points? Really?)

“COUNCIL WILL NOT COMMENT ON THE ONGOING CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION AT THIS MEETING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” the agenda says, according to the Kansas City Star."

[nando161mando]

Witness: Police chief who led raid on Marion newspaper wanted texts deleted

[willow-thicket]

"The police chief was aware the paper was looking into his background. Meyer said a Record reporter approached Cody seeking comment on the allegations. In response, Meyer said Cody threatened to sue the paper."

Must be nice to be newly elected Chief in Marion, a former Kansas City Police Officer, and feel like you have the right to hide your history from the community you serve. Must feel pretty above the law to threaten to sue a newspaper for looking into your background & then stomp all over the First Amendment in a raid. Must have felt pretty smug and self-righteous to take all the evidence of their communication with the police, when you took all the equipment during the "raid".

How does it feel now that you've called down the national and international press, not to mention the ACLU, upon your head? Those background checks aren't likely to go unnoticed now!

[flange5]

[beardedmrbean]

The former Kansas police chief who led the raid on a newspaper will be charged with interfering with the judicial process, special prosecutors announced Monday.

The charge against Gideon Cody will be filed in Marion County District Court, according to a report by Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett and Riley County Attorney Barry Wilkerson.

The two were appointed to review the Aug. 11 raid at the Marion County Record. The investigation generated nearly 10,000 pages of documents.

The 124-page report analyzes the execution of the search warrants at the newspaper and the fallout after the raid, which drew international condemnation. The anticipated charge appears centered on text messages exchanged between Cody and Kari Newell, a local business owner, following the raid.

Searches were also conducted at the home of the newspaper’s publishers, Joan Meyer and her son Eric Meyer. Joan Meyer, 98, died the next day.

The report acknowledged that Joan Meyer was extremely upset by the searches and may not have died Aug. 12 if the raids had not been carried out. But the prosecutors concluded that the officers were not criminally responsible for her death.

The warrant was withdrawn the next week by the local prosecutor who found there was “insufficient evidence.”

Reached by phone on Monday morning, Eric Meyer said it was too early for him to react because he was still reading the report.

Cody did not return a voicemail seeking comment. Cody, a former Kansas City police officer, resigned from the Marion Police Department in the weeks after the raid.

Several lawsuits were filed in the wake of the raid.

[posttexasstressdisorder]

[thatstormygeek]

The courts have been flying under the radar for a while. With SCOTUS doing corruption writ large, hopefully sunlight will reach the smaller corners of the judiciary as well.

[porterdavis]

Great. Now can they bring back the editor's mother, a previous editor of the newspaper, back from the dead? She died the day after the raid, and her family points to the stress of the experience as a probable cause.

Local cops and local DAs acting in concert are seldom (if ever) your friends.

[meteorologistaustenlonek]

"The department has taken a different approach to defending its raid, insisting, “No one is above the law, whether a public official or a representative of the media.”

That’s true — including for government officials who trample the First Amendment.

Even if Marion police had reason to believe the newspaper skirted the law’s edge, it wouldn’t justify invading a newsroom."

[follow-up-news]

A former Kansas police chief linked to the Aug. 11, 2023, raid of a local newspaper was formally charged with one count of interference with the judicial process. Gideon Cody, who resigned from the Marion Police Department less than two months after the raid, is accused of inducing a witness to withhold information in a felony case, according to a complaint filed Monday. The charge comes a year after the offices of the Marion County Record were searched in a raid that also targeted the homes of its publisher and co-owner Eric Meyer and City Council member Ruth Herbel. Meyer's 98-year-old mother Joan Meyer, also a co-owner of the newspaper, lived with him and was home at the time of the raid. She collapsed and died the day after the raid, and Meyer blamed her death on the stress of the raid.

[commiepinkofag]

American Fascism

Police raid newspaper office & publishers' home in Kansas in what appears to be political retaliation for a 'non-story'

leading to a stress-related death

[alphaman99]

Jim Kelly

Now your government is executing raids on newspapers and shutting them down. Third-world country? Nope. Kansas. The Marion County Record, a local newspaper. Law Enforcement agents will do exactly as they are told, the constitutionality of such things be damned.

[beardedmrbean]

MARION, Kan. (AP) — A small newspaper and a police department in Kansas are at the center of a dispute over freedom of speech that is being watched around the country after police raided the office of the local newspaper and the home of its owner and publisher.

Officials with the Marion Police Department confiscated computers and cellphones in the Friday raid, prompting press freedom watchdogs to condemn the actions of local authorities as a blatant violation of the U.S. Constitution’s protection for a free press. The Marion County Record's editor and publisher, Eric Meyer, worked with his staff Sunday to reconstruct stories, ads and other materials for its next edition Wednesday.

A search warrant tied Friday morning raids, led by Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody, to a dispute between the newspaper and a local restaurant owner, Kari Newell. She is accusing the newspaper of invading her privacy and illegally accessing information about her and her driving record and suggested that the newspaper targeted her after she threw Meyer and a reporter out of her restaurant during a political event.

While Meyer saw Newell's complaints — which he said were untrue — as prompting the raids, he also believes the newspaper's aggressive coverage of local politics and issues played a role. He said the newspaper was examining Cody's past work with the Kansas City, Missouri, police as well.

“This is the type of stuff that, you know, that Vladimir Putin does, that Third World dictators do," Meyer said during an interview in his office. "This is Gestapo tactics from World War II.”

Cody said Sunday that the raid was legal and tied to an investigation.

The raids occurred in a town of about 1,900 people, nestled among rolling prairie hills, about 150 miles (241 kilometers) southwest of Kansas City, making the small weekly newspaper the latest to find itself in the headlines and possibly targeted for its reporting.

Last year in New Hampshire, the publisher of a weekly newspaper accused the state attorney general’s office of government overreach after she was arrested for allegedly publishing advertisements for local races without properly marking them as political advertising. In Las Vegas, former Democratic elected official Robert Telles is scheduled to face trial in November for allegedly fatally stabbing Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter Jeff German after German wrote articles critical of Telles and his managerial conduct.

Meyer said that on Friday, one Record reporter suffered an injury to a finger when Cody wrested her cellphone out of her hand, according to the report. The newspaper's surveillance video showed officers reading that reporter her rights while Cody watched, though she wasn't arrested or detained. Newspaper employees were hustled out of the building while the search continued for more than 90 minutes, according to the footage.

Meanwhile, Meyer said, police simultaneously raided his home, seizing computers, his cellphone and the home’s internet router.

But as Meyer fielded messages from reporters and editors as far away as London and reviewed footage from the newsroom’s surveillance camera, Newell was receiving death threats from as far away, she said. She said the Record engages in “tabloid trash reporting” and was trying to hush her up.

“I fully believe that the intent was to do harm and merely tarnish my reputation, and I think if had it been left at that, I don’t think that it would have blown up as big as it was,” Newell said in a telephone interview.

Newell said she threw Meyer and the Record reporter out of the event for Republican U.S. Rep. Jake LaTurner at the request of others who are upset with the “toxic” newspaper. On the town's main street, one storefront included a handmade “Support Marion PD” sign."

The police chief and other officials also attended and were acknowledged at the reception, and the Marion Police Department highlighted the event on its Facebook page.

LaTurner's office did not immediately return phone messages left Sunday at his Washington and district offices seeking comment.

Newell said she believes the newspaper violated the law to get her personal information as it checked on the status of her driver's license following a 2008 drunken driving conviction and other driving violations.

The newspaper countered that it received that information unsolicited, which it verified through public online records. It eventually decided not to run a story because it wasn’t sure the source who supplied it had obtained it legally. But the newspaper did run a story on the city council meeting, in which Newell herself confirmed she'd had a DUI conviction and that she had continued to drive even after her license was suspended.

A two-page search warrant, signed by a local judge, lists Newell as the victim of alleged crimes by the newspaper. When the newspaper asked for a copy of the probable cause affidavit required by law to issue a search warrant, the district court issued a signed statement saying no such affidavit was on file, the Record reported.

Cody, the police chief, indicated that probable cause affidavits were used to get the search warrants. When asked for a copy, Cody replied in an email late Sunday that the affidavits would be available “once charges are filed.”

Cody defended the raid, saying in an email to The Associated Press that while federal law usually requires a subpoena — not just a search warrant — to raid a newsroom, there is an exception “when there is reason to believe the journalist is taking part in the underlying wrongdoing.”

Cody did not give details about what that alleged wrongdoing entailed.

Cody, who was hired in late April as Marion’s police chief after serving 24 years in the Kansas City police, did not respond to questions about how police believe Newell was victimized.

Press freedom and civil rights organizations said that police, the local prosecutor's office and the judge who signed off on the search warrant overstepped their authority.

“It seems like one of the most aggressive police raids of a news organization or entity in quite some time,” said Sharon Brett, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas, adding that it seemed “quite an alarming abuse of authority."

Seth Stern, director of advocacy for Freedom of the Press Foundation, said in a statement that the raid appeared to have violated federal law, the First Amendment, “and basic human decency.”

“The anti-press rhetoric that’s become so pervasive in this country has become more than just talk and is creating a dangerous environment for journalists trying to do their jobs," Stern said.

Meyer said he has been flooded with offers of help from press freedom groups and other news organizations. But he said what he and his staff need is more hours in the day to get their next edition put together.

Both he and Newell are contemplating lawsuits — Newell against the newspaper and Meyer against the public officials who staged the raid.

Meyer also blames the home raid for stressing his 98-year-old mother enough to cause her death on Saturday. Joan Meyer was the newspaper's co-owner.

As for the criticism of the raid as a violation of First Amendment rights, Newell said her privacy rights were violated, and they are “just as important as anybody else’s.”