Police Chief Who Headed Raid Of Kansas Newspaper Resigns Rather Than ‘Defend His Actions’
from the winners-never-quit dept
A few months ago, the Marion, Kansas police department made the immediately regrettable decision to raid the office of the local paper, as well as the home of the paper’s owner.
According to Police Chief Gideon Cody, this was the proper thing to do. The paper’s journalists were suspected of breaking state laws pertaining to computer crimes and identity fraud.
The backstory made things a bit clearer. Local business owner Kari Newell was seeking a liquor license. Meanwhile, she was apparently in the middle of a rather messy divorce. Her estranged husband allegedly leaked details of her arrest for DUI and driving without a license to the Marion County Record.
The Marion County Record did its due diligence and verified the arrest using public records made available by an area news outlet. Then it decided not to publish anything about this, deciding it did not want to be seen as a combatant in combative divorce proceedings. It did, however, inform the police someone had passed them this tip and asked the PD to verify the alleged facts.
At that same time, another Marion County Record reporter was digging into Chief Cody’s past, trying to figure out why he would leave a presumably well-paying position with the Kansas City PD for a far less-lucrative position at the head of the Marion County PD.
Somehow, this all culminated in the raids mentioned above. The latter raid, which involved several officers entering the home of 98-year-old paper co-owner Joan Meyer’s house, ended with the seizure of her electronics. It also ended with her death. Meyer passed away less than two days after the raid was carried out.
Since then, it’s all gone sideways (and backwards) for the Marion County PD. The local prosecutor, Joel Ensey (who has his own ties to Kari Newell) retracted the warrants, claiming they weren’t supported by probable cause. He also sought a court order for the return of all devices and data seized by the PD. The warrants were approved by someone else with a connection of sorts to Kari Newell and her alleged moving violations. Judge Laura Viar, a recent appointee to the county post, has been arrested at least twice for driving under the influence.
The Kansas Bureau of Investigation is now looking into the warrants and subsequent raids, apparently in order to determine whether these were lawful, unlawful, or just extremely ill-advised.
The raids attracted the attention of the international press. Everything about the raids suggested a police chief and his underlings acting vindictively to punish reporters for asking too many questions and protecting powerful friends, like business owner Kari Newell.
Some of this has been confirmed, albeit obliquely.
[Kari] Newell said [Chief] Cody sent her that information via text message on Aug. 7.
“[He] said, ‘This is Chief Cody, we believe you’ve been the victim of a crime,'” Newell said.
Newell is a local restaurant owner whose driving record Cody used as a premise to raid Marion County Record and two homes.
The day of Newell’s interview, Newell said she no longer had the text messages between her and Cody.
The I-Team asked Newell for the text messages between her and Cody, but according to Newell, she deleted the text messages at the chief’s behest.
Not a good look. And definitely not a good look that Chief Cody was using a personal phone to engage in his public duties. While it’s understandable officers may reach out personally to crime victims, anything having to do with ongoing investigations should be on the permanent record — detailed in reports and/or handled via official communication lines.
Since the cop shop and local politicians preferred using personal phones rather than public email accounts or anything else subject to Kansas open records laws, the Marion County Record has had no luck obtaining these communications via public records requests.
Marion County officials say they have no way to obtain texts and emails sent and received with personal devices, nor do they have any way of forcing these officials to turn over these communications. And that’s probably true, unfortunately. However, that doesn’t mean these communications are beyond the reach of subpoena in the lawsuit already ongoing, much less the lawsuits that are sure to follow. And Newell’s decision to delete these text messages is probably going to hurt Chief Cody more than it hurts her during ongoing litigation, if only because it’s unlikely Newell will be named as a defendant.
Chief Cody is now former Chief Cody. He’s decided to get out before it gets any worse for him. His reason for abandoning his post? He simply does not want to have to answer for his actions.
KHSB News 41 — the same station that obtained Newell’s admission she had deleted her texts with Chief Cody at Cody’s request — obtained a copy of Cody’s resignation letter, which explicitly states he does not want to take responsibility for this debacle.
Mayor,
I have not intended for myself to be such a distraction for the City.I would like to resign effective 15th of October if that is okay with you.
I do not want to defend my actions to the Council and I do not want for everyone to have to formally discuss any discipline.
I believe if the circumstances were known then it would mitigate your response but I am getting exhausted from the media pressure much like all of you. I believe Jennifer Hill will be sending something in regards to this. I don’t believe this resignation will hinder the city’s defense regarding the search warrant. A response will be forthcoming on 10/04 that will shed more light on this.
It is possible Cody means he believes his actions are defensible but thinks he shouldn’t have to defend them. But the wording suggests Cody would rather walk away from this than take what’s coming to him. It looks far more cowardly than honorable. And the weak sauce of “if the circumstances were known” is nothing more than the former chief implying everyone else but him is wrong about this.
Cody’s standard communications m.o. applies here as well:
The email was sent from Cody’s personal email address and delivered to Mayfield’s private email address.
His last bit of official business for Marion County, sent via and delivered to unofficial email accounts. As for the “10/04” date mentioned in the resignation email, it appears to be a typo. The email was sent October 15th, meaning the promised “forthcoming response” won’t be delivered until sometime in the future at whatever date the former chief meant to type.
So, it’s a good thing he’s gone. But it’s not that great that he’s able to eject himself from the proverbial plane he’s been flying into the ground for the past few months. That means he’ll survive the wreck, but everyone else without this luxury will have to deal with the collateral damage. And it means he’ll just move on to his next law enforcement job, free of any lingering marks on his permanent record.
Filed Under: gideon cody, kansas, kari newell, marion county, marion county pd
Companies: marion county record
Comments on “Police Chief Who Headed Raid Of Kansas Newspaper Resigns Rather Than ‘Defend His Actions’”
It’s just possible that other law enforcement shops will have been watching the news, and might have seen the circus that keeps following this clown.
We can hope, anyway.
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Other departments are watching, alright. Watching in awe at how this guy keeps getting away with his career of bullshit.
If he doesn’t get another position as an officer, it will be because a police union snaps him up as a consultant first.
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Nah, cops gonna cop – his buddies in blue will make sure he gets another job.
Re: 'Raided a newspaper' is not going to be a negative for that lot...
To the extent that other departments are watching I’ve no doubt that for the majority the thought process is something along the lines of ‘Let the heat die down and then offer him a job, that’s someone who knows how to get things done even if he got caught this time’.
A pertinent update from earlier today courtesy of Jessica McMaster, whose work on this story has been nothing short of extraordinary: “Newly obtained records reveal Gideon Cody, the former police chief who launched a raid on Marion County Record newspaper, sought the arrest of two reporters and the city’s vice mayor.”
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Great update, to be clear he sought the arrests 4 days after the raid and during the international press coverage.
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And the KBI were more than willing to help make this happen.
We’re rapidly reaching the point where its going to become we investigated ourselves and decided we did nothing wrong.
Also, there are a buncha people in politics who do not understand that when you claim a but its actually b or then maybe c… it makes you look much much worse.
Now. Do. The. Judge.
Re: Sadly, can't
Not going to happen: judges have absolute immunity. The best you can hope for is impeachment.
Re: Re: Judicial review board
The judge is scheduled to appear before a judicial review board this month A Kansas citizen from Topeka filed a complaint
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Who knows, maybe someone will finally get to the bottom of her drunk driving accidents having disappeared from the legal system & her never facing anything.
That sound you hear is davec whimpering in protest as he cleans up the spilt fee-fees of cops in Aisle Five.
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No! Noooooooooo!!!
Look at his prior job
There is obviously some reason he took a smaller job. I suspect that the reason is hidden behind an NDA with his prior employer.
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We all know he was being inappropriate with a female subordinate.
She taped him, making it really hard to ignore (read coverup).
He got bounced to less desirable shift & before any other real punishment could happen he left.
Its been mostly confirmed that during the raid he learned which former coworkers had spoken to the paper confidentially about what they knew about his leaving.
(Because how else can you find out what your “enemy” knows but to wrap it up in a bow with a warrant signed by a compromised judge?)
It wasn’t an NDA it was the thin blue line & a department stonewalling information requests because thats what they do.
https://kansasreflector.com/2023/11/06/kansas-officials-downplayed-involvement-in-marion-raid-heres-what-they-knew/
Here is an interesting nonpaywalled article about the case from the Kansas Reflector
Aside, my guess is that most of the lawsuits will be dismissed because the actors had a “valid” search warrant signed by a judge, wouldn’t be surprise to see KBI go after the identity theft charges, the judge will get at most a public reprimand from the judicial review board, and Chief Cody will go after the confidential sources who were discussing his problems-or sue KCPD for letting confidential personnel records get out.
Also, the reporter who looked up the DUI info and the one who had her cell phone ripped out of her hand both resigned
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Doubtful. The validity of the warrants was in question from the get-go, and the warrants being withdrawn as “insufficient” after the fact only proves the point. The police department will most likely settle with the parties suing them to avoid a costly civil trial (and to avoid having any more of its dirty little secrets exposed).
I would. If the district attorney wasn’t willing to go after anyone for those charges after the search, I doubt a state-level agency would want even that much heat and scrutiny on them.
She should be getting far more of a punishment than that.
Dude resigned his post; what’s he gonna do, hunt them all down and kill them for revenge?
…and?
Your whole post reeks of cop apologia, by the way. Cody was wholly in the wrong here: He knew his warrants were on thin ice, he had someone delete texts sent to him about this situation, and he did official police business on a private cellphone (presumably to avoid official records laws). Nothing he’s done in this situation paints him as a “wronged party” who did proper police work and was hung out to dry by higher-ups when the story became international news. Gideon Cody went after a newspaper he didn’t like almost as a favor to an acquaintance of his on some trumped-up bullshit; he’s the one who turned the heat on and stepped into the frying pan, he’s the one who decided that the heat was too much for him to bear, and he’s the one who decided to jump out of the frying pan. And by the by, any attempt by the KBI to “finish what he started” will only increase scrutiny upon that agency—possibly to a level beyond what Cody received—and paint a picture of Cody and the KBI working together (even after his resignation!) to take down the Marion County Record.
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In a world in which government officials(more than the PD seem to be involved here) are presumed to have immunity, that a judge signed a legal document saying it was legal for us to do this may well carry a lot of weight. It may not be morally right but it could well be an effective defense. That after the fact the warrants were withdrawn doesn’t change that the various entities involved can say, “But at the time of the raid we had this document”
It may well be that the KBI doesn’t go after the computer misuse/identity theft charges because of all the publicity, but what they said after the warrant was withdrawn was that they would continue to investigate the original charges without using any of the tainted evidence from the raid.
Judges sign off on warrants that are later not found to meet basic 4th amendment rules like naming what is being sought. The evidence gathered from an invalid warrant may get thrown out, but have you seen any judges face disciplinary action for not knowing the 4th amendment? Something they would likely be dealing with frequently.
This is a case where an inexperienced judge faced something new to her–and she may also have defended herself by saying Chief Cody produced compelling evidence that certain exceptions to federal and Kansas law might apply in this case–even though it would be hard to see how they could apply. I will be surprised if she faces any serious consequences.
Again I am guessing what will happen with her on the basis of how things seem to work in this country generally, not on any personal judgment of what would be an appropriate punishment.
What Chief Cody could do, assuming he did look at the computer or phone data and found out who was talking, is let any friends or allies he has in KCPD know who was leaking info about his problems with a little reminder of Can you trust them? Would they talk about you if you did something wrong? and let them decide if making those sources’ lives in the department miserable would be something they want to do
I have serious doubts as to whether the Marion PD’s assurances they never looked at anything on the devices are true. They did after all appear to be hiding an image they had taken of a drive.
You are right that my mentioning that those two reporters resigned was irrelevant to my post and it appears unfortunately that it gave the impression that I was saying they resigned because they did something wrong. Nothing could be farther from the truth. In the whole of this affair the Record and its staff have displayed the highest ethical standards and been very forthcoming about how they got information.
On the other side, various government officials, not just Marion PD, have displayed a much different set of moral and ethical standards
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That the warrants were later withdrawn as being legally insufficient tells me that if a different court were to have examined the warrant applications in the context of this whole situation and the evidence presented by Cody, the warrants would’ve been denied—or at least limited severely—by that court.
Even if they used the evidence, most of it would point to wholly legal actions by the newspaper. And that besides, I’ve yet to see any evidence that anyone at the Marion County Record committed a crime.
Considering how the judge at the center of this case appears to have done a favor to Gideon Cody by signing off of those warrants, something tells me her decision to fuck around with the First and Fourth Amendments will have her finding out more than she would’ve liked.
See, that’s the kind of shit that makes me think you’re someone with a willingness to lick boot. Even if it’s the first day on the bench, no judge is going to be “inexperienced” enough to completely overlook a weak warrant application. Judges have to know and apply the law from day one; I refuse to blame her supposed lack of experience as a judge on her knowing and willful decision to sign off on those warrants.
I will, too. But the fact that she somehow managed to get two DUIs swept under the rug probably won’t help her avoid all consequences.
If anyone uses that information to exact revenge, Cody will automatically be implicated thanks to the international attention this story has gotten. I doubt he’ll have anyone willing to bail him out of being investigated for trying to ruin someone’s life without the power of the badge to back up his efforts—especially if, thanks to all the increased attention on Cody, the people trying to help him land in the spotlight next to him.
Resign?
You can resign your way out of a legal morass? I bet Sam Bankman-Fried wishes his attorneys had thought of that!
A good job if you're corrupt enough to take it
Ah one of the biggest perks of being a cop, if the heat gets to bad and it looks like you might actually face the dreaded Personal Accountability just resign and dodge any and all responsibility for your actions.
He seems to be under the delusion that by resigning means he’s not going to have to “defend his actions”
If the town is being sued, or he is personally, he’s quite likely going to have to defend them, unless the town settles before discovery, because regardless of whether he’s cheif or not, he’s going to face a deposition or or cross examination to explain his actions.
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I’m betting on the police department and the city settling so neither one has to go through a long and potentially humiliating civil trial. If Cody is being sued personally and he still has any goddamn sense, he’ll also settle to avoid the same fate. He could’ve offered up a defense of his actions any time between after the raid and his resignation; that he hasn’t tells me that he has no defense that won’t sound like petty revenge against the Marion County Record.
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We still have a chance for this to go sideways, the “city” kept talking after the insurance company took over & said STFU. The first rule of Crisis Management is No comment, not full throated support of the dumbass who kicked the hornets nest.
Then the “city” provided incomplete information to the insurance company’s lawyer who had requested documents to answer a records request, resulting in the lawyer being made to look stupid & having to speak with the “victim” to try to figure out what was in the missing pages while being the current custodian of records for the city.
Now that the records make it clear that Cody had decided kicking wasn’t enough he was going to fully shove his dick into the hornets nest by arresting many of the people he already terrorized & the KBI was all up in supporting pushing the case forward and getting more records from online services to help build the whole stolen identity case that just happened to allow him to find out who was talking at his old job, make unreported copies of questionable seized data & “forgetting” to document that it was done & not returned… until the papers lawyer made it clear that they had retained a forensic expert who was going to see what was copied or altered.
Oh and the ever popular we can’t provide those records because he was using personal devices/accounts for offical business and it would be to hard & mean for us to produce the records so we shouldn’t have to.
Crazy lady still hadn’t faced anything for driving illegally for YEARS.
No one can answer how 2 DUI’s magically vanished from the court system, 1 involving the destruction of public property.
This is a little MAGA fiefdom, who thought that having power meant no one could oppose them, hold them to account, or win this fight.
I heart delusional people.
They were going to put and 80 yr old woman in jail, leaving her 88 yr old husband who is suffering from dementia that she provides the care for, b/c possibly getting a record is a much bigger crime than DUI in this little hellhole.
Resignation?
He broke the law, why should him resigning change that or stop him being prosecuted?