Police raid on Kansas newspaper raises questions about legality, press freedom

A police department in Kansas is facing a wave of scrutiny following a raid on a small-town newspaper.

Police in the town of Marion, which is home to 1,900 people, raided the offices of the Marion County Record as well as the home of publisher Eric Meyer on Aug. 11, seizing computers, cellphones and the paper’s server. Meyer’s 98-year-old mother, Joan, was present at his home and died Saturday, which Meyer attributed to the stress of the events. The paper said the home of 80-year-old Vice Mayor Ruth Herbel was raided at the same time.

In a story on Aug. 12, the Record wrote that the elder Meyer collapsed at her home after being “stressed beyond her limits and overwhelmed by hours of shock and grief.” Eric Meyer has alleged that Police Chief Gideon Cody, who was hired to the position in late April, injured a reporter’s finger when grabbing her cellphone, and that police photographed Meyer’s personal bank and investment statements at his home.

“Our first priority is to be able to publish next week,” Meyer said, “but we also want to make sure no other news organization is ever exposed to the Gestapo tactics we witnessed today. We will be seeking the maximum sanctions possible under law.”

Police defended the raid in a statement Saturday posted to Facebook, writing, “The victim asks that we do all the law allows to ensure justice is served.” The alleged victim is restaurant owner Kari Newell, who had ejected reporters from an event with Rep. Jake LaTurner, R-Kan., earlier this month and accused the newspaper of illegally obtaining information about her previous drunk-driving conviction.

Meyer has denied that accusation, saying the newspaper got the information about the restaurateur’s drunk-driving record from a separate source and published it only after Newell publicly accused the paper of wrongdoing at a City Council meeting. Newell said the paper was targeting her and hurting her chances of obtaining a liquor license for her catering company.

According to a copy of the search warrant obtained by the Kansas Reflector, the raid was conducted on suspicion of identity theft and unlawful acts concerning computers. Marion County District Court Magistrate Judge Laura Viar has faced criticism for her approval of the search warrant, which cites Newell. Authorities haven’t made the affidavit that led to the warrant’s authorization available to the public yet.

Ongoing investigation into the police chief

In an interview with journalist Marisa Kabas, Meyer said his paper had been investigating Cody, the new police chief, after former co-workers with the Kansas City police began reaching out after Cody was named to his new position with allegations that he “was about to be demoted at his previous job and that he retired to avoid demotion and punishment over sexual misconduct charges and other things.”

Meyer said that although the paper had “half a dozen or more” anonymous sources, it had not run the story because no one would go on the record, and it had been unable to get Cody’s personnel file to confirm.

“But the allegations — including the identities of who made the allegations — were on one of the computers that got seized,” Meyer said. “I may be paranoid that this has anything to do with it, but when people come and seize your computer, you tend to be a little paranoid.”

Cody told the Kansas City Star that the paper had not published any of the allegations against him because they weren’t true. He added, “However, if they can muddy the water, make my credibility look bad, I totally get it. They’re gonna try to do everything they possibly can.”

A potential violation of the Constitution and federal law

The raid has sparked criticism from journalists and organizations both local and national. It has also inspired a wave of new $35 annual online subscriptions to the Marion County Record from those wanting to support the paper.

“An attack on a newspaper office through an illegal search is not just an infringement on the rights of journalists but an assault on the very foundation of democracy and the public’s right to know,” said Emily Bradbury, executive director of the Kansas Press Association. “This cannot be allowed to stand.”

In a letter to Cody, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press called the raid “significantly overbroad, improperly intrusive, and possibly in violation of federal law,” and urged police to “immediately return any seized equipment and records to the newspaper; purge any such records retained by your department; and initiate a full, independent, and transparent review into your department’s actions.”

Lynn Oberlander, a First Amendment attorney, told NPR that police raids on newsrooms are rare because they’re illegal under the Privacy Protection Act of 1980. Police defended the raid by saying they were directly investigating a crime committed by the journalists. However, experts say, while the federal law allows police to search journalists when there is probable cause to believe they’ve committed a crime, that exception doesn’t apply if the journalist’s alleged offense is connected to news gathering.

“It raises concern for me,” Oberlander said. “It normalizes something that shouldn’t be happening — that Congress has said should not happen, that the First Amendment says should not happen.”

The Marion paper isn’t the only recent example of reporters being targeted by law enforcement. A small-town newspaper in Oklahoma has been harassed by local authorities in recent years for its reporting on corruption in the sheriff’s office. In 2019, San Francisco police raided the home of a journalist investigating the mysterious death of a public defender, with the city eventually agreeing to a $369,000 settlement in the incident. Last year, a newspaper publisher in New Hampshire accused the state attorney general’s office of overreach after she was arrested on charges tied to illegal political advertising.