This isn’t even the end of the fallout, but it’s a lot of it. A small Kansas town that basically conspired to silence local journalists who were asking too many questions continues to face the consequences of its actions.
That’s a relief. Far too often, power gets abused and the justice system sides with the far-more-powerful abusers. That hasn’t happened here. And maybe that’s because it happened in a small town and involved people whose power was too limited to affect anyone else outside of its jurisdiction.
But it was corruption. And the local government did deserve to get punished. To recount everything that has happened to this point in detail would take a few thousand words. Suffice to say, what happened here rivals anything seen in pop culture that involves the internal rot of small town governments.
Just because you’re wearing a badge doesn’t mean you’re not a bullying thug, as this footage of the (illegal) raid on 98-year-old newspaper owner Joan Meyer’s residence makes clear:
There’s Kari Newell, a local business person who was seeking a liquor license for a new business when her previous drunk-driving record became public. There’s County Attorney Joel Ensey, who claimed to have no knowledge of the raid until public records showed he actually knew plenty about it beforehand. There’s the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, which also disavowed all knowledge, until it became clear it had knowledge as well, at which point it began publicly condemning Chief Cody and his department. There’s the mayor who didn’t like his deputy mayor and seemed to be all too willing to indulge the police chief. There’s the judge who signed off on the search warrants without reading them and then tried to distance herself from actions — a judge who apparently had some drunk driving problems of her own. There are the communications Chief Cody made to Kari Newell, informing her he was going to raid the newspaper to shut down its coverage of her and, presumably, any further investigation into his law enforcement past. In the middle of all of this, there’s some bullshit computer crime charges, which were invoked despite the newspaper accessing driver record data legally through a third party.
Added to that, there’s the fact that Chief Cody told Kari Newell to delete his texts to her, which has led to the now-resigned police chief facing criminal charges for telling Newell to engage in the destruction of evidence.
There’s also the fact that this settlement — obtained with the assistance of the Institute for Justice — is only part of the payout. Former police chief Gideon Cody and the city of Marion are still facing this lawsuit, which is due to enter discovery in the near future.
The county involved in a small-town Kansas newspaper raid in 2023 will pay a cumulative $3 million to three journalists and a city councilor.
In two of the four agreements, the Marion County Sheriff’s Office also crafted a statement admitting regret.
“The Sheriff’s Office wishes to express its sincere regrets to Eric and Joan Meyer and Ruth and Ronald Herbel for its participation in the drafting and execution of the Marion Police Department’s search warrants on their homes and the Marion County Record. This likely would not have happened if established law had been reviewed and applied prior to the execution of the warrants,” the statement reads.
Unfortunately, those apologies were only extended to the owner of the newspaper (Eric Meyer, whose 98-year-old mother died the day after the raid of her home) and vice-mayor Ruth Herbel, who was somehow dragged into this simply because she clashed frequently with Mayor David Mayfield and was hit with a recall petition created by the mayor’s wife.
The other two journalists receiving a payout from the county (Deb Gruver and Phyllis Zorn) will only get the money. There’s no apology in here for them, despite them being equally subjected to unconstitutional searches and seizures by local law enforcement. I’m sure they’re happy with being compensated for rights violations, but it seems weird the county would not extend the same courtesy to people who suffered through an illegal search just because they were at work (rather than in their own homes) when it happened.
In some cases, law enforcement officials violate rights because they think they’re too big to go after. In other cases — like this one — they seem to do it because they think everyone around them is too small to matter. If nothing else, the outcome of this lawsuit has derailed that misconception and hopefully will deter this sort of thing in the future. If it doesn’t, a city and county that have already committed far more money than they possibly ever expected to shell out at one time will find themselves being bankrupted by people hired to not only serve their residents, but ensure their money is well-spent.
There is simply too much going on here to pretend there’s a way to succinctly sum up what’s led us to this point in our coverage. A small Kansas newspaper’s offices, the home of its 98-year-old owner (who died shortly after the raid), and the home of Marion vice mayor Ruth Herbel were all raided by the Marion County police, led by its new police chief, Gideon Cody, an apparent refugee seeking solid employment after having (allegedly) become a bit of a problem for the Kansas City Police Department.
I’ll try, but I’m going to crib from some of my previous notes. There’s Kari Newell, a local business person who was seeking a liquor license for a new business when her previous drunk-driving record became public. There’s County Attorney Joel Ensey, who claimed to have no knowledge of the raid until public records showed he actually knew plenty about it beforehand. There’s the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, which also disavowed all knowledge, until it became clear it had knowledge as well, at which point it began publicly condemning Chief Cody and his department. There’s the mayor who didn’t like his deputy mayor and seemed to be all too willing to indulge the police chief. There’s the judge who signed off on the search warrants without reading themand then tried to distance herself from actions — a judge who apparently had some drunk driving problems of her own. There are the communications Chief Cody made to Kari Newell, informing her he was going to raid the newspaper to shut down its coverage of her and, presumably, any further investigation into his law enforcement past. In the middle of all of this, there’s some bullshit computer crime charges, which were invoked despite the newspaper accessing driver record data legally through a third party.
Then there’s this, which opens up the court decision [PDF] finding (mostly) in favor of former Vice Mayor Ruth Herbel, who sued following the raid on her house that accompanied the PD’s raid of the newspaper and its owner’s house. It’s the sort of thing that might make one yearn for the relative innocence of big city corruption as it details exactly why a bunch of local officials and government employees may have conspired to intimidate their enemies (a newspaper and a deputy mayor not exactly fond of the mayor) into silence by sending out some guys with guns to rifle through their belongings and walk off with their electronics. If you thought this was nasty and convoluted before, buckle up:
Ruth has been politically active. She ran for city council in November 2019. She said she was “tired of the dishonesty in the city administration.” Ruth campaigned with [Mayor David] Mayfield on a platform of change and transparency. But Ruth and Mayfield began to clash after the election. The local paper reported that Ruth and Mayfield disagreed about city-council meetings. Ruth wanted freewheeling discussion, dissent, and debate. Mayfield seemed to want to act as a rubber stamp.
Ruth and Mayfield had several disputes. Mayfield once called her a “bitch” during an executive session. Mayfield began trying to control to whom Ruth could speak, how much she could speak, and on what topics. In November 2021, he required her to first raise concerns with the city administrator before raising them at meetings. He required her to give advance notice of any ordinances or policies she planned to mention. Mayfield had the city attorney send Ruth a letter warning her it could be illegal for her to speak to anyone interested in dealing with the city without full council approval. Mayfield forbade Ruth from contacting the Kansas League of Municipalities. Mayfield eventually forbade Ruth from contacting the city attorney. No other city council members had these restrictions.
Ruth frequently criticized Mayfield in the Marion County Record, which is the local paper. Ruth complained Mayfield was violating the city charter, handing out funds without authorization, giving raises to favored employees, holding illegal meetings, and disregarding procedure. The paper ran several stories detailing the tension between Ruth and Mayfield. The stories included comments by Ruth that upset Mayfield. In July 2022, Mayfield and the city council passed an ordinance over Ruth’s dissent. Ruth organized a referendum against the ordinance. She spent her own money on signs and advertising that criticized the ordinance. In December 2022, voters rejected Mayfield’s ordinance by an overwhelming margin. The paper described it as a personal defeat for Mayfield.
About a month after the failed vote, Mayfield’s wife filed a petition to recall Ruth from her position on the city council. Mayfield was a sponsor of the petition. Mayfield’s wife promoted the removal petition on Facebook, which Mayfield re-posted. The recall petition failed because there weren’t enough signatures collected.
In June 2023, Mayfield ordered the city administrator to make all city council members sign an acknowledgment that they held their office on an at-will basis, even though they were elected. Ruth crossed out the “at-will” language before signing.
That’s kind of a lot. And that explains why the mayor and his supporters in the city council would have been perfectly fine with supporting raids of the newspaper and Ruth Herbel’s home. But to do that, you need the assistance of law enforcement. Well, it seems Gideon Cody and his business-owning, drunk-driving friend were close enough they were able to collaborate on other forms of intimidation.
Cody’s appointment as police chief immediately introduced a new level of antagonism.
Mayfield decided to hire Cody despite Cody’s troubled history. Cody took the oath of office before the city council had a chance to formally vote on hiring him.
Cody immediately showed hostility toward the media. He declined interview requests with the paper and stopped providing weekly activity reports to the paper. The paper published that he had discontinued the practice. Cody also told the city administrator not to provide the paper with the pay scale for officers.
Cody’s view of the media was shared by others in Mayfield’s administration. By the end of July 2023, the city administrator told Mayfield they should cease all communication with the paper. Mayfield shared posts on Facebook calling journalists the “real villains in America.”
From there, it just descends into full-blown corrupt insanity — the sort of thing you wish was relegated to works of fiction.
[Mayor]Mayfield instructed Cody to open an investigation into his administration’s critics. Cody reached out to KDOR [the TV station website where the paper had verified the DUI info], and Mayfield and Cody both reached out to [Kari] Newell to warn her that Ruth knew about her suspended license. Mayfield and Cody claimed that Ruth would oppose Newell’s catering license because of the DUI, even though Ruth’s concerns were just about eligibility.
Cody told Newell that someone had stolen the letter from her mailbox. He didn’t have any factual basis for this. Newell said he was wrong, and Cody, again without factual basis, said someone had stolen her identity. Cody told Newell that the paper had shared her driving record with Ruth even though Cody knew [Pam] Maag [another town resident] had given the letter to both Ruth and the paper.
Mayfield told Newell that the only way to stop Ruth and get her removed from the city council was to have her arrested and charged with a crime. Mayfield and Cody decided it was a crime for Ruth “to merely possess a screenshot of a screenshot of a letter detailing information posted publicly to Facebook.”
There’s so much more in there, including the cooperation and guidance of the local sheriff, who felt his office would be embarrassed if it became public it had allowed Newell to not only drive, but operate a catering business (presumably involving driving commercially-licensed vehicles) without a valid license. Working with Chief Cody and the mayor, computer crime charges were whipped up and a warrant request handed to a judge — one that carefully omitted every single fact that would have shown no accused of any crime had actually committed these crimes.
There’s a lot to take in here and I encourage you to read the entire decision to fully comprehend the sheer amount of deliberate misconduct engaged in by multiple government officials. The upshot of the decision is this, though: most of the claims survive. Several parties are dismissed, but — most importantly — the ones still on the hook are Chief Cody and his Marion PD underlings. The city itself isn’t allowed to escape the lawsuit either, thanks to the mayor’s overt involvement and complicity in these horrendous civil rights violations. The lawsuit will move forward, with Ruth Herbel continuing to be represented by the Institute of Justice.
This is an extremely ugly chapter in American law enforcement history. Unfortunately, it’s one of several and it certainly won’t be the last time the government abuses its power to silence people it doesn’t like, including journalists who are given the utmost in First Amendment protections when it comes to handling issues of public interest. But hopefully this will cause the next would-be Chief Cody/Mayor David Mayfield to pause before deciding the communities they’re supposed to be serving are fiefdoms they can control through intimidation and unlawful actions.
I am not going to rehash this entire debacle again, but suffice to say a small town police department in Kansas — led by (the now-resigned) police chief Gideon Cody raided the offices of the Marion County Record (along with the home of its co-owners, one of which was 98-year-old Joan Meyer, who died less than 48 hours after the raid of her home) to supposedly investigate a computer crime.
Journalists had (legally) obtained driving records of a local business owner. Chief Cody thought otherwise and appeared to be rather friendly with the business owner, who was seeking a liquor license but seemingly had a history of driving drunk. A whole bunch of bullshit began after the raid made national headlines, but TL;DR: there was no crime nor was there enough evidence of any suspected crime to justify an unambiguous assault on the First Amendment. (That Chief Cody was aware the paper was looking into his troubled past only makes things worse.)
As the fallout continues, everyone involved is seeking to exonerate themselves, ranging from the local prosecutor who claimed all of this happened behind his back (not true!) to the judge who handled the clearly deficient warrant applications, Laura Viar.
Caught in the fallout, Judge Viar was facing possible discipline for approving these search warrants. But she has managed to avoid being (at least professionally) tainted by here involvement. But her defense of her actions raises more questions than it answers, as Sherman Smith reports for the Kansas Reflector.
The magistrate who authorized last year’s police raid on the Marion County Record escaped discipline from a state panel by making claims that contradict statements in federal lawsuits about how the search warrants arrived in front of her and whether the police chief swore they were true before she signed them.
Magistrate Judge Laura Viar’s secret explanation, obtained by Kansas Reflector, adds a new layer of confusion and mystery to how law enforcement were able to carry out the search and seizure of journalists’ computers and cellphones without regard for state and federal laws that prohibit such police action. It also raises concerns about the low standards set for judges by the Kansas Commission on Judicial Conduct.
The Reflector’s reporting focuses on statements about who actually delivered the warrant requests to Judge Viar. County Attorney Joel Ensey has maintained he and his office were never involved. But emails obtained after this case blew up seem to say he sent one of his office managers to deliver them to the judge. On top of that, former police chief Gideon Cody says he emailed them to Ensey, who stated he printed them off without reading them.
That alone is a problem. A prosecutor should be reviewing warrants forwarded to them because that’s how you stop something like this from happening. This is dereliction of duty but I can see why some prosecutors might see it as something far more useful: plausible deniability. If you don’t read the affidavits, you can claim you weren’t aware your cop buddies were planning to start violating a whole bunch of rights.
According to Viar’s letter [PDF], she was approached by Judge Robson and an “unknown officer” with the warrant requests. Robson did not introduce this person to Judge Viar. Instead, the judge asked a couple of leading questions to the officer about the involvement of the KBI (Kansas Bureau of Investigation) and exited the room.
Judge Viar asked the “unknown” officer if the warrants were time-sensitive since she had other things to deal with. The officer (introduced as the “chief of police”) answered in the affirmative, claiming investigators were waiting for him at the sheriff’s office. Viar’s letter states affirmatively that “Chief Cody did appear before me,” which contradicts her earlier statement.
Right past this point is where I think it gets really sketchy. Never mind the conflicting narratives about who brought the warrants and who may have seen them before they ended up in Judge Viar’s hands. The real problem here is how Judge Viar handled the warrants.
This is from Judge Viar’s statement — the one she used to help escape being disciplined for botching this essential part of her job.
I began looking over the paperwork when I was told [the officer] was going to be called back because his signatures were not authorized. He returned and swore that the facts in the applications were true and correct and that it was his signature on each application. I then signed the applications.
Fantastic. That’s an essential part of the equation. But it’s only part of it. The really important part of this process had yet to be accomplished. But that didn’t stop Judge Viar from signing the applications.
Here’s the next part of this narrative, in the judge’s own words:
Very quickly after Chief Cody left the office I began to review the applications.
Do you see the problem here? The warrants had already been signed. It was only after the judge approved the warrants that she finally decided to read them. And while some people might look at the narrative in Judge Viar’s letter and come to conclusion she read the affidavits prior to the officer’s return for the swearing and signing, they’re only lying to themselves about what happened here.
Why do we know that? Because Judge Viar can’t even definitively state whether or not the reading of the affidavits occurred prior to the officer’s return to her office. And that’s in the statement she made to defend herself against accusations she mishandled these warrants.
I do not recall if he returned immediately, as [sic], or after I had reviewed the warrants.
That’s the kind of fact that needs to be remembered. Chances are that if you can’t remember whether or not officers are still in your office while you read their affidavits, it’s because they’ve usually already exited with signed warrants in hand. At no point does Judge Viar state that she asked the officer (presumably Chief Cody) any questions about the applications. The only statements she makes in terms of verification was asking him to verify his signature and swear that the statements he made are true and correct.
But that’s the most important part of reviewing warrant applications: the review. Given the narrative provided by the judge herself, it appears that the standard operating procedure is to approve first and review later. And if Cody’s signature had already been notarized (which might have happened if the prosecutor had bothered to review the warrants before sending them to a judge), it’s not unreasonable to assume Judge Viar would never have bothered to read the underlying affidavits.
While I realize that 95% of law enforcement work is the same thing over and over, each warrant is limited time/place permission slip to violate the Constitution. For that reason alone, every warrant should be scrutinized prior to signature and the presenting officer should be there to answer any questions raised by their application. If more judges would take this part of the process seriously, we’d see a pretty steep decline in civil suits, suppression motions, and challenges raised by third-parties hosting other people’s information and communications. Just do your job as though your own rights depend on it. Because they do.
An ex-big city cop who blew into a small town under suspicious circumstances to become police chief. A business owner seeking a liquor license who spent a lot of time driving around with a suspended license due to DUI violations. A small town paper that dug into all of these stories and more to the dismay of those featured in their stories. A county prosecutor who denied involvement in a blatantly unconstitutional raid until it became impossible to do so.
The first targeted the local newspaper, the Marion County Record. Its offices were raided and devices were seized from everyone in the building, along with the paper’s computers and servers. Then the home of the paper’s co-owners was raided — a raid that was greeted with outrage by the homeowner/paper owner: 98-year-old Joan Meyer. She died the day after the shocking raid of her home by then-police chief Gideon Cody and his co-conspirators.
Since then, multiple lawsuits have been filed. One was filed by journalist Deb Gruver. The police chief claimed the raid was justified because some vague Kansas computer crime law had been violated when journalists accessed (completely legally, btw) the business owner Kari Newell’s driving records. Deb Gruver did not access those records but she had been digging into Chief Cody’s past, wondering why someone working for the Kansas City PD would take a pay cut to preside over a much smaller department in a tiny rural town.
Gruver’s phone was seized personally by Chief Cody — something caught on an officer’s body camera and featured in Gruver’s lawsuit [PDF].
Chief Cody grabbed the phone out of Gruver’s hand when she told him she needed to call the paper’s co-owner, Eric Meyer (the son of the deceased Joan Meyer).
Also captured on body camera was Chief Cody’s call to Kari Newell, the aggrieved business owner who felt her driving records had been illegally accessed.
Kari Newell answered defendant Cody’s call, saying “hey.”
Chief Cody responded, “hey, honey, we can’t write anything, so…”
Kari Newell responded, “yeah, no, I understand…I just got a message from somebody at the hotel saying that the whole staff of the newspaper’s out on the sidewalk and all the computer equipment’s leaving the building.”
Chief Cody responded, “yeah, surprising how that works, isn’t it?”
Surprising? Not really. That’s just how it works when law enforcement officers or officials feel they’re above the law.
A former reporter for a weekly Kansas newspaper has agreed to accept $235,000 to settle part of her federal lawsuit over a police raid on the paper that made a small community the focus of a national debate over press freedoms.
The settlement removed the former police chief in Marion from the lawsuit filed by former Marion County Record reporter Deb Gruver, but it doesn’t apply to two other officials she sued over the raid: the Marion County sheriff and the county’s prosecutor. Gruver’s lawsuit is among five federal lawsuits filed over the raid against the city, the county and eight current or former elected officials or law enforcement officers.
Gruver’s lawsuit against Marion County Attorney Joel Ensey and Sheriff Jeff Soyez remains in force and it seems unlikely either of those will be able to exit the lawsuit without a settlement or a judgment in favor of Deb Gruver. The amended lawsuit (filed in late June of this year) prompted a pretty quick buyout for Cody and it contains plenty of new damaging information that shows just how deeply involved both the county attorney and county sheriff were involved with these unconstitutional raids.
While it would be nice to believe ex-chief Cody is paying out of his own pocket for this, the city and the city’s insurance company both refused to comment on the settlement, which suggests the town’s residents are actually on the hook for this one as officials seek to distance themselves from Chief Cody and his actions.
A town of 1,900 can’t possibly absorb the sort of monetary damage these actions have generated. And there’s a good chance Marion’s insurance company is going to step away from this as soon as it can, leaving residents in the unenviable position of either being at the mercy of an uninsured government or being asked to dig a little deeper in their pockets to cover the increased premiums.
The PD claimed this was all above-board. Supposedly computer crime laws were broken by local journalists when they sought to verify a tip about a local business owner’s lack of a valid drivers license. Why would this matter? Well, someone whose license had been yanked due to DUI violations probably shouldn’t be handed a liquor license, which was what was happening here.
But there was another twist: the information seemed to be tied to a particularly messy divorce. The Marion County Record decided not to run the story. But it did verify the information (using a public-facing site) and, regrettably, informed the local cops about this particular unlicensed driver (and local business owner).
Then there was another twist. The new chief of police, Gideon Cody, who had taken a considerable pay cut when accepting this position (having moved on [possibly with encouragement] from a more well-paying job in Kansas City), was apparently displeased the local paper was digging into his hasty exit from a big city police force.
Some evidence of past misconduct was uncovered. Journalists from the Record asked for comment. Shortly thereafter, the paper’s offices were raided, using the search of drivers license records as a pretext. Chief Cody claimed this was all above board and that his actions were supported by the local prosecutor. The local prosecutor claimed otherwise when the raid made national news. So did the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, which claimed it was investigating the raid. Public records and text messages obtained from the business owner soon made it clear Chief Cody, the local prosecutor, and the KBI were all lying.
The PD and its chief were sued by one of the paper’s journalists soon after. As more information came forward, Chief Cody was suspended. Then he resigned, rather than face the professional consequences of his actions.
But he still has to answer for the civil consequences of his apparently vindictive actions. A second journalist from the Marion County Record has sued the former chief, along with the county that employed him. Phyllis Zorn, who performed some of the verification on the tip about the drunk-driving business owner, has filed her own federal lawsuit — one that offers some more information that might explain why a troubled law enforcement official would decide he could raid a newspaper into silence. (h/t CNN, but only a little, since I had to go get a copy of Zorn’s lawsuit myself because the multi-national news outlet can’t be bothered to include it in its reporting.)
It gets juicy pretty quickly in Zorn’s lawsuit [PDF]. Here’s the (alleged) dirt on former chief Gideon Cody, which may have provided the motivation for his actions.
Marion was in need of a new police chief in 2023. By April, the city had identified three candidates: acting police chief Duane McCarty; Chris Mercer, who works as a fire investigator for the state fire marshal and part time Marion police officer; and Gideon Cody, a captain in the Kansas City, Missouri Police Department.
Gideon Cody had experienced a number of problems in his former employment. To the surprise of no one, when the Record reported that Gideon Cody was a candidate for the Marion police chief position, the newspaper began receiving tips about Cody from persons who were afraid to go on the record for fear of retribution by Cody.
According to one source, Cody was “the absolute worst commander I ever experienced,” said “his ego would not allow him to listen to what anyone below his rank said,” and described him as a “toxic/ego-centric commander.”
Three sources told the paper that Cody ran over a dead body at a crime scene. The tipsters also reported that Cody was about to be demoted by the Kansas City Police Department from captain to sergeant because of offensive conduct towards other officers.
Multiple sources reported a conversation in which Cody expressed his disdain for working in dispatch, and said if he had not been transferred out of dispatch he would have found “the skinniest and prettiest girl down there and f*cked her” to force a reassignment.
Nothing Streisands like an unconscionable string of civil rights violations. If Cody wanted his past buried, he probably shouldn’t have assumed he could just steamroll a small-town paper into submission. This is all on the public record now and Cody will have to speak up (either in court or on paper) if he wishes to dispute it. He can’t just duck back into the shadows and pretend this isn’t happening.
Allegedly, Chief Cody thought he could intimidate Zorn into exiting the paper currently investigating his past and firing up a competitor that would provide pro-Cody propaganda.
Cody soon became aware that the Record was looking into his background in Kansas City. This infuriated Cody and he later suggested to the plaintiff that she leave the paper and start a competing paper in Marion. He promised her that he would invest with her and would enlist a number of others to do so as well. The plaintiff laughed off the suggestion, not understanding the depth of his anger at the Record. When Ms. Zorn disclaimed any interest in his proposal, she was moved to Cody’s enemies list.
Provable in court? Maybe not! It’s not like Cody is going to admit to any of this if it’s true. But it does suggest he had other reasons than the supposed computer crime violations to engage in his raid of the newspaper’s offices. Even if none of this is true (or can be proven), Chief Cody should never have decided to roll up on the First Amendment like a SWAT team at the wrong address. This is not going to end well for anyone involved in this insanely stupid series of events.
There’s an entire nasty soap opera contained in this filing. How much of it will be useful to lawsuit remains to be seen, but it certainly makes for entertaining, if somewhat depressing, reading. Odds are this lawsuit will need to be amended before a court will consider it seriously, but it does provide a lot of details that haven’t been made public previously.
For instance, the detective ordered by Chief Cody to write a “preservation warrant” to serve to the paper’s internet provider refused to sign it. Detective Christner stated the PD had “no legal authority” to obtain these records. (However, he also stated that if the PD wanted these records, it would be better off just searching the paper’s offices, rather than approaching a third party. He also personally participated in the search he seemed to feel was at least a bit out of Constitutional bounds.)
The lawsuit also claims Chief Cody lied on his warrant application to search the paper’s owner’s home, falsely claiming the document he’d seen was obtained illegally from a government website when, in fact, it’s completely legal for anyone to search the Kansas Department of Revenue website using any personal information they’ve obtained, so long as they fill out the search form using the name of the person performing the search (as Phyllis Zorn did when she sought to verify the information provided by the paper’s source).
The lawsuit also claims the forensic search of Zorn’s computer — performed during the raid of the paper’s offices — was sloppy, vague, and predestined to generate “evidence” of whatever crime Chief Cody hallucinated the journalists had committed.
In accordance with this requirement, Marion County Sheriff’s Det. Aaron Christner connected an external drive via a USB port to reporter Phyllis Zorn’s computer in the Record’s newsroom. He then executed a software application titled osTriage, which he had previously loaded onto the external drive.
The program allows a user to conduct a keyword search on the connected computer and its storage media, thereby allowing a user to make a determination in the field as to whether the device was used in the commission of a crime. But the keywords selected for the preview search of the Record’s computers were so vague and indistinct they constituted a sham search. For example, one of the keywords was the word “vehicle,” while another keyword was the word “Kansas.”
None of the “hits” from the “preview search” of Phyllis Zorn’s computer were even suggestive of a crime. Instead, it is obvious the keyword search terms were a sham and were never designed to comply with the search warrant’s requirement that officers conduct a preview search “to exclude from seizure those which have not been involved in the identity theft.” The name searches produced false “hits” 100% of the time.
Even with these broad terms, the detective was unable to get enough hits to generate probable cause. It didn’t matter. Zorn’s computer was seized, along with the paper’s servers and computers/devices owned by other Marion County Record journalists.
Chief Gideon is gone. According to Zorn’s lawsuit, he “fled the jurisdiction” shortly after resigning. Zorn and her lawyer suggest he’s hiding out in Hawaii.
It doesn’t really matter where he went. He may not ever have to answer these accusations directly, but he’ll always be known as the wayward cop who left one force in disgrace, took a pay cut, and soon left that police force in disgrace. This is a particularly ugly chapter in the history of US law enforcement. Just because it happened in a small Kansas town doesn’t make it any less of a travesty. If Gideon Cody truly felt these searches were justified, he’d still be running the county’s police force. Instead, he’s in the wind, behaving more like a criminal on the run than a career cop.
On August 11, the Marion County PD — with the assistance of the Kansas Department of Revenue, the county sheriff’s office, and (for some fucking reason) the local fire marshal — raided the office of the Marion County Record, along with the home of its co-owner, 98-year-old Joan Meyer.
The raid was prompted by the very expansive reading of two state laws, one involving identity fraud and the other involving computer crimes. The first response from nearly everyone but Police Chief Gideon Cody was a denial of knowledge, much less involvement.
But as reporters kept digging into the story, the denials — starting with the county attorney Joel Ensey’s claim of innocence when he asked a court to quash the warrants — began to unravel. The DA claimed he’d never seen the warrants prior to their service. But an email exposed this lie, showing Chief Cody had informed of his plans to search the paper’s office, as well as sent him copies of the warrants he planned to deploy.
The Kansas Bureau of Investigation (KBI) strode onto the scene, presenting itself as a force of good, here to get to the bottom of this pile of constitutional violations.
Attorney General Kris Kobach, who has oversight of the KBI, told reporters on Aug. 16 that the KBI “was not notified of the searches prior to their taking place.”
That statement is, at best, misinformed. Perhaps Kobach just didn’t know. But the KBI sure did. It, too, had been informed of Chief Cody’s unconstitutional plans. Not only that, it apparently approved of them, as Jessica McMaster reports for KSHB:
Text messages obtained by the KSHB 41 I-Team reveal Gideon Cody claimed the Kansas Bureau of Investigation was “100 percent behind” him one day after the raids on Marion County Record and two homes.
The text messages, provided by a source and independently verified by KSHB 41, are between Cody and Joel Ensey, Marion County Attorney, who revoked Cody’s warrants within days following the raids.
More evidence of KBI’s involvement and prior knowledge. And more evidence of the county attorney’s prior knowledge and direct involvement.
Now, it could have been that Chief Cody was putting words in the mouth of the KBI. But if so, he was doing it constantly. A text sent to county attorney Ensey on August 9, two days before the raids, said “KBI will be lead in the investigation.” One day after the raids, Chief Cody sent Ensey another text referring to KBI’s apparent support of his actions.
The final message from Cody on the subject of KBI and the newspaper raid stated KBI was taking its own route with the investigation. Not an investigation of the raids themselves, mind you.
Cody sent another response: “They want to use an independent lab not affiliated with [the] government for forensics, and they appear to be taking this case over. I will let you know.”
So, the staties wanted to do their own digging into the seized electronics using an “independent lab,” whatever that means in this context. The KBI never got a chance to do it. The court ordered all devices and data returned to paper and its employees before they were ever in the hands of the KBI.
Additional emails obtained by KSHB contain even more evidence of foreknowledge and approval, if not direct involvement.
One day before the raids, Todd Leeds, KBI special agent, sent an email to a Marion police officer. He wrote, “Did you guys execute this today?”
The police officer responded, “No. My understanding is that the county attorney wasn’t in the office today.”
The subject of that email is, “Additional SW for Eric Meyer’s Residence.”
Given these facts, it would make zero sense for KBI to be allowed to engage in an investigation of the Marion County PD and its actions. It has already let everyone know what it thinks about what happened here and seems unlikely to discover anything damning when doing so would mean damning itself.
Multiple sources confirm an outside law enforcement agency has joined Kansas Bureau of Investigation’s probe into the events surrounding the raid on the Marion County Record newspaper.
Eric Meyer, publisher of Marion County Record, Deb Gruver, former reporter of the Record, and Ruth Herbel, vice mayor of Marion, told the KSHB 41 I-Team an agent with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation has reached out to them about the case.
According to those who spoke to KSHB after speaking to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation agent, CBI is definitely not digging into the actions of the newspaper or its employees. It wants to know why this investigation was initiated by the Marion County PD and why it decided the best plan of action was an all-day assault on constitutional rights.
Hopefully, the CBI will expand its investigation to include the KBI, which is certainly far from blameless. This debacle — every small part of it — needs to be dragged out into the sunlight. The last thing the KBI should be allowed to do is creep back into the shadows while everyone’s paying attention to an outside agency and its apparently far more competent investigative work.
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 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.
[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.
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.
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.
There’s no reason to make fascist small talk a reality, but sometimes folks just do what they do. Six weeks ago, a small town police department raided a small town newspaper in a vicious demonstration of boots-on-a-human-face-forever thuggery. The supposed crime? Digging up public records showing a local business owner in search of a liquor license had her own problems with handling liquor, including DUI and driving without a license charges.
Shortly thereafter, the government machinery lurched into motion. The Marion County PD — helmed by newly employed Chief of Police Gideon Cody — sprung into action. It raided the offices of the local paper, as well as the home of its 98-year-old co-owner, Joan Meyer. A show of force was followed by the seizure of plenty of electronics, including journalists’ personal phones and the paper’s servers. It was also followed by the death of Joan Meyer, last seen putting her indignation on full display as Cody’s officers raided her home for evidence… of what exactly?
The operative theory was identity fraud and illegal computer access. The facts on hand suggested something completely different: the delivery of information from a citizen source coupled with a public domain search of a private party’s website to verify the tip delivered to the Marion County Record.
Then there was the suggestion these raids weren’t prompted by the paper’s (abandoned) investigation into business owner Kari Newell’s alcoholic indiscretions, but rather by the paper’s questioning of Chief Cody’s permanent record. There were hints — some unverified — that his history of misconduct had resulted in him leaving a lucrative job with the Kansas City PD for the position at the head of one of the tiniest police forces in Kansas.
Whatever the compelling factor, the end result was horrific. Writers, journalists, and rights activists immediately banded together to condemn the raid of the newspaper, as well as to offer their services to the victims of these apparent rights violations.
In addition, the state’s investigative bureau stated it would be looking into the actions of the Marion PD. This announcement from the KBI (Kansas Bureau of Investigation) followed prosecutor Joel Ensey’s declaration the search warrants were not supported by probable cause and were being withdrawn by his office. Ensey also asked the court (the same court that approved the obviously deficient warrants) to order the PD to return all seized items immediately, as well as destroy any copies of data/communications it might have made following the seizure of these devices.
And that brings us to the court itself. The judge who cleared the warrants — Laura Viar — had her own history of DUI arrests, which suggests she might be more sympathetic to an alleged victim of criminal activity who also had her own history of DUI arrests.
To sum up, it’s all pretty much a season of Fargo. It’s corrupt small town politicians supporting corrupt small town business owners, aided and abetted by corrupt law enforcement — all in hopes of silencing the truth-tellers from telling the truth. A wealth of Midwestern accents (and Midwestern morals) are undoubtedly intertwined. And someone has already died, which means the stakes are higher for everyone involved, likely leading to further malfeasance and/or recrimination. For goddamn sure, I’d watch this.
To sum up: the PD’s chief had reasons to silence the newspaper. The business owner had reasons to silence the newspaper. The judge had reasons to silence the newspaper. The prosecutor’s possibly antagonistic relationship with the business owner gave him reasons to silence the newspaper.
That the paper couldn’t be silenced and, instead, enjoyed international support, made this alliance — conspiratorial or not — untenable. Somehow, even though everything was hot and heavy in the international press, local legislators still felt compelled to defend the PD’s indefensible actions.
The city council “addressed” the controversy by reminding attendees — in a red-letter 47-exclamation point(!!!) pre-meeting bulletin — that the most pressing local issue was not going to be on the agenda. The city’s only mayoral candidate offered his half-assed support of local cops, claiming the public should just hang back and wait for law enforcement to clear itself.
While [vice mayor Ruth] Herbel [whose own house was raided] said after the meeting that she agrees that Cody should resign, other City Council members declined to comment. Mike Powers, a retired district court judge who is the only candidate for mayor this fall, said it’s premature to make any judgments.
Oh really? Well, fuck right off, mayoral candidate Mike Powers. There’s plenty to judge right now. And there’s even more reason to do so, considering the town’s top cop has been ejected from his seat of power in light of recent events he’s directly implicated in. And that includes being judged by the guy who actually holds this office: the current mayor of Marion, Kansas.
The Marion, Kansas, police chief was suspended this week following a series of raids that included the office of a local newspaper and the home of the city’s vice mayor.
Marion Mayor David Mayfield suspended Police Chief Gideon Cody on Thursday, according to the Marion County Record, the same newspaper that was raided.
The Marion Police Department confirmed the suspension on Saturday. The mayor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Without a doubt, the city will never publicly comment on this… at least not until the KBI investigation is completed and/or all resulting lawsuits are settled. No one can possibly condone these acts. But they can at least pretend to be neutral parties until a judge (probably not the drunk driving one) finds them at least partially culpable for the string of rights violations perpetrated by the Marion PD.
And until they are forced to equivocate, the world will be watching. This was an obvious wrong propelled by powerful self-interests. But the power of the government rarely exceeds the power of the press, no matter how much the government tries.
Shocking the conscience. That’s the legal term for government actions that are so far from acceptable no one, not even cop-friendly courts, can deem them acceptable.
The alleged criminal acts didn’t seem to be supported by much in the way of probable cause. Someone (apparently the estranged ex-husband) supplied information to the small paper about business owner Kari Newell’s arrest for driving under the influence as well as driving without a license. Newell was currently seeking approval for a liquor license as well as in the midst of a messy divorce.
The newspaper verified the information using an outside source. It informed the police of the information it had been given. And, finally, it chose to spike the story rather than be used as a pawn in divorce proceedings.
For these actions, it was raided by Marion County PD officers. The alleged crimes were identity fraud and an extremely vague “using a computer during a crime” statute. The paper was also investigating the current police chief (Gideon Cody), digging into his past history of misconduct. Whether or not this played a part in the debacle that followed remains to be seen. Added into the mix was the judge herself (Laura Viar), who had her own history of driving drunk and who had decided the probable cause-free affidavit was worthy of her approval.
Whatever the case, it was soon confirmed the paper used a non-state source to verify Newell’s arrest, contrary to the assertions of law enforcement, which had assumed otherwise to support its “identity fraud” claims. Shortly thereafter, the local prosecutor issued a letter withdrawing the warrant for lack of probable cause. The county attorney also asked the court to demand the PD return the seized items, which included computers (and a router) from the deceased Joan Meyer’s home, as well as the newspaper’s server and devices/computers owned/used by the paper’s employees.
Kansas authorities must destroy all electronic copies they made of a small newspaper’s files when police raided its office this month, a judge ordered Tuesday, nearly two weeks after computers and cellphones seized in the search were returned.
[…]
The local prosecutor and sheriff agreed investigators shouldn’t keep that evidence, but [Marion County Record attorney Bernie] Rhodes insisted on a court order to document it. It won’t be clear what files were on the drive until Rhodes gets a copy.
That takes care of one part of this mess… at least if you trust the misbehaving police department to actually destroy all the copied data in its possession. It hasn’t exactly been forthcoming or trustworthy to this point, so perhaps it might be advisable for the Kansas Bureau of Investigation (which is performing its own investigation of these raids) to follow up on the ordered data destruction.
Marion Mayor David Mayfield says he’s not “sure exactly what they did wrong” when the Marion police department executed search warrants at a newspaper office and two homes for evidence of computer crimes.
And he says if there was a problem with the search warrants, the county attorney or judge should have rejected them beforehand.
“I mean, everybody’s looking at Marion like we’re a bunch of hicks now,” Mayfield told The Eagle recently in his first extensive interview since the raids. “And the police department just did what the judge allowed them to do.”
Whoa. Let’s get a couple of things straight, Mayor Good Faith Exception. Raiding newspaper offices is never a good idea, no matter where it happens, and no matter what paperwork cops might have obtained to “justify” it. This is America, not some tinpot autocracy where raiding the free press is considered to just be a natural part of everyday existence.
Second, no one’s looking at the newspaper or its readers or uninvolved residents like they’re a “bunch of hicks.” But they’re damn sure looking at the PD and idiots offering up ridiculous defenses of these raids as a “bunch of hicks.” There’s a difference. You’re being besmirched. And, given this “defense” of the PD, you deserve it, as do the people you’re defending.
And that finally brings us to the matter mentioned in the headline. The first of what is sure to be many lawsuits has been filed. Marion County Record reporter Deb Gruver, whose phone was seized during the raid of the paper’s officers, has fired the initial litigation salvo, as Jessica McMaster reports for KSHB.
[Police Chief Gideon] Cody claimed in an affidavit Phyllis Zorn, reporter with Marion County Record, committed identity theft and engaged in illegal acts concerning computers by downloading Newell’s driving record.
[…]
[Newspaper co-owner]Eric Meyer said Gruver had nothing to do with the story on Newell.
“Chief Cody first handed Ms. Gruver the Warrant when he arrived, and as she began to read it, she began to access her personal cellular phone – telling Chief Cody that she needed to call Eric Meyer. Chief Cody responded by reaching over the papers and snatching the phone out of her hand.”
Not only did the PD not have the probable cause needed to raid the paper’s offices, Chief Cody definitely didn’t have the probable cause to seize the phone of a reporter uninvolved with the (never-published) story at the center of the case.
However (and this could prove interesting depending on where discovery goes), Gruver was involved in the investigation into Chief Cody’s misconduct history — something that appears to have been dead-ended by the Kansas City PD’s refusal to release Cody’s personnel records.
That fact is noted in her lawsuit [PDF] which makes all the obvious points about this raid, namely that nothing about it (the raid, the seizure of her phone, etc.) was supported by probable cause, something admitted by the prosecutor when spiking the warrant.
It also highlights a number of other interesting facets to this case, which imply there’s a bit of a conspiracy behind the raid of the paper (and two residences) that culminated in this particular seizure of the reporter’s phone and this particular lawsuit. Listed in the allegations: Kari Newell’s attempt to silence reporting about her DUI and lack of valid license, allegations the PD had given Newell a free pass on previous traffic violations, Chief Cody’s personal interactions with Gruver while she investigated his past misconduct, and the fact that the only liquor license controlled by Newell was actually in the name of the wife of the county prosecutor.
Juicy.
We’ll see where this goes but there’s no way it ends well for the Marion County PD. Its warrant has already been rejected by the prosecutor Chief Cody and his officers apparently presumed would wholeheartedly support being cowed into silence with a days-worth of rights violations. What no one appeared to consider is the possibility this might spread beyond the borders of the small town. But it’s made national headlines for several days straight. And that means it’s too big for this small town to ignore.
One can only assume the Marion, Kansas police department felt this would never be this big. Overconfidence is a killer, as the MPD can surely attest, albeit after the fact.
The raid of the Marion County Record is now international news, thanks in large part to the flagrant First Amendment violations. Then there’s the fact that the co-owner of the newspaper — 98-year-old Joan Meyer — died a day after the Marion PD raided her home in search of evidence of apparently non-existent crimes.
Facts were in short supply immediately following the raid. The affidavit for the multiple search warrants were unavailable. The Marion PD said things about probable cause that were almost immediately proven false. And the judge who signed off on the warrants was in no hurry to turn any info over to the Marion County Record, much less those whose interest had been drawn to the case.
There was apparently no probable cause for the raids. That much was admitted by county prosecutor Joel Ensey, who issued a statement announcing the withdrawal of the warrants, as well as a request that the Marion PD immediately return the items seized, which included the (now-deceased) Joan Meyer’s internet router, as well as the paper’s data server.
According to the sworn statements, the Marion PD believed it was constitutional to raid the paper’s office, as well as the paper’s co-owner’s home. The supposed (but admittedly non-existent, at least according to the county DA) cause for action were suspected violations of two Kansas laws. The first involved identity fraud. The second was the far-more-nebulous “used a computer during a crime” statute.
The backstory is this: the paper received information about local business owner Kari Newell, who was seeking a liquor license for a business despite having been arrested for drunk driving and driving without a valid license. This information was given to the newspaper, which verified it using publicly available arrest records. It never published this information because — as became clear later — it felt it was being used as a pawn in divorce proceedings involving Kari Newell.
The paper did, however, contact the local PD. That appears to have been a mistake.
Also included in the speculation was the fact the paper was preparing an article detailing Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody’s past history of misconduct. Again, nothing had been published but the PD had been approached for comment, giving Chief Cody a heads-up on the paper’s plans to expose his checkered past.
This is now just troubled water, albeit water that flows under an international bridge. The small town show of force is news everywhere, which makes it much more difficult to pretend this is anything more than a handful of constitutional violations in service of — at best — a local business owner.
In addition, the Kansas Bureau of Investigation (KBI) has been called into action, preventing the Marion PD from engaging in a perfunctory (and, presumably, exonerative) investigation of itself. Prosecutor Joel Ensey has shrugged off his alleged ties to Kari Newell and her businesses to call bullshit on the raids.
That leaves everyone still hoping to salvage something from this debacle scrambling. And now that everything’s on the table following the rescinding of the warrants and the release of affidavits and recordings, the desperation of those involved is so palpable those following this case can show us on the doll where the story inappropriately touched us.
We’re five hundred words in and we’re just getting to the latest developments. Let’s begin with the footage from (now-deceased) Marion County Record co-owner Joan Meyer’s home, which shows her (correctly) confronting MPD officers for their intrusions on her rights:
There are six officers. There is one 98-year-old woman. The case being “investigated” involved alleged computer-related crimes. What possibly justified this show of force, much less the underlying search that apparently required six cops in bulletproof vests to show up and wave their flashlights around during a daytime search in an adequately lit home?
Two state lawmakers, the Kansas house Democratic leader, Vic Miller, and Democratic state representative Jason Probst, a former newspaper reporter and editor in Hutchinson, said they plan to pursue legislation dealing with search warrants next year but are looking for other ideas as well.
“I don’t want this to fade away until we’ve addressed it,” Miller said during a statehouse news conference.
Fantastic. But strike while the iron’s hot. If you don’t, this will just become history that can be easily ignored, rather than an indictment of law enforcement’s ability to impose its will to convert “enshrined rights” into “non-existent rights.”
The WGA East and the NewsGuild-CWA are calling the recent police raid of a tiny newspaper in Kansas “an affront to the constitutionally protected rights of journalists and news media workers.” In a joint statement, the unions are demanding that the Marion County Police department “be held accountable for its raid of the Marion County Record newspaper” in Marion, Kansas.
[…]
The Society of Professional Journalists also weighed in. “By all accounts, the raid was an egregious attack on freedom of the press, the First Amendment and all the liberties we hold dear as journalists in this great country,” SPJ National President Claire Regan said during an emergency board meeting last week to approve funding to the newspaper.
Both City Council member Ruth Herbel and the newspaper have said they received a copy of a document about the status of the restaurant owner’s license without soliciting it. The document disclosed the restaurant’s license number and her date of birth, which are required to check the status of a person’s license online and gain access to a more complete driving record. The police chief maintains they broke state laws to do that, while the newspaper and Herbel’s attorneys say they didn’t.
Herbel, the city’s vice mayor, presided over the City Council’s meeting Monday, its first since the raids. It lasted less than an hour, and Herbel announced that council members would not discuss the raids — something its agenda already had said in an all-caps statement in red followed by 47 exclamation points. She said the council will address the raids in a future meeting.
The 47 exclamation points did not matter. The raids were discussed. Council members (including a potential mayoral candidate) apparently refused to wholeheartedly condemn the PD’s actions, but at least Herbel was on board with ending Chief Cody’s career in Marion, Kansas. And it followed statements from the government agency indirectly involved in this shameful series of events making it clear the access the cops called “illegal” was actually completelylegal.
While Herbel said after the meeting that she agrees that Cody should resign, other City Council members declined to comment. Mike Powers, a retired district court judge who is the only candidate for mayor this fall, said it’s premature to make any judgments.
The meeting came after Kansas Department of Revenue spokesperson Zack Denney said it’s legal to access the driver’s license database online to check the status of a person’s license using information obtained independently. The department’s Division of Vehicles issues licenses.
“The website is public-facing, and anyone can use it,” he said.
And more news surfaced, suggesting this was a string of self-serving events that culminated in the government deciding (as a group) a local newspaper no longer had First Amendment rights. The underlying issue was information about a DUI arrest involving a local business owner. The judge who signed off on the search warrants — the ones the local prosecutor withdrew stating they were not supported by probable cause — has her own history of driving drunk.
The Kansas magistrate judge who authorized a police raid of the Marion County Record newsroom over its probe into a local restaurateur’s drunken-driving record has her own hidden history of driving under the influence.
Judge Laura Viar, who was appointed on Jan. 1 to fill a vacant 8th Judicial District magistrate seat, was arrested at least twice for DUI in two different Kansas counties in 2012, a Wichita Eagle investigation found.
She was the lead prosecutor for Morris County at the time.
On top of all of this, the Marion PD had its facts wrong about how the (supposedly illegal) information gathering was performed by the Marion County Record:
The website Marion Chief of Police Gideon Cody accuses a reporter of accessing illegally is not the website the reporter used, according to Kansas Department of Revenue.
Cody claims in his affidavit the reporter used a website that appears to be the Kansas Motor Vehicles Records search, which requires users to select specific criteria to access another driver’s information.
Cody writes in the affidavit, “downloading the document involved either impersonating the victim or lying about the reasons why the record was being sought. Based on the options available on Kansas DOR records website.”
In the affidavit Cody writes the reporter would’ve needed to select a purpose for the research. Cody didn’t think the criteria applied to the reporter.
The KSHB 41 News I-Team contacted KDOR.
In email, KDOR responded by saying, “the service used in the Marion County situation is KDOR’s free license status check, which does not require you to select criterion for the purpose of checking the status of an individual’s driver’s license.”
This isn’t getting any better for those who hoped there might be a chance to salvage this series of rights violations.
First, there’s the chief of the department, who had been made aware the paper was investigating his misconduct history. Then there’s a local business owner who might have enough sway to induce police activity on her behalf. Then there’s the judge who might feel people shouldn’t be so interested in DUI arrests. Finally, there’s the unverified accusations someone allegedly impersonated Kari Newell to download her info from a public website. And underneath it all runs a nasty strain of recrimination, given that the information was apparently supplied to the newspaper by disgruntled, soon to be ex-spouse.
What it looks like is a conspiracy. It probably isn’t. But it is not inconceivable that a handful of people operating on their own, inadvertently aligned interests, are capable of producing something that looks like a conspiracy. Whether or not something conspiratorial actually occurred is unlikely to be proven without a lawsuit and considerable amount of compelled discovery.
Until then, we can take it at face value: cops abused laws to secure bad warrants to violate rights. And that’s enough to go on for now.
