Raid on Small Kansas Paper Swept Up Information on Police Chief

The Aug. 11 police raid of the Marion County Record, a small Kansas newspaper, swept up cellphones and computers containing information about the outlet’s investigation of the police chief and has drawn rebukes from First Amendment experts and dozens of news organizations.

One of the Record’s owners, 98-year-old Joan Meyer, collapsed and died Saturday, one day after police officers and sheriff’s deputies seized items from her home and from the publication’s offices, according to her son Eric Meyer, who is also a co-owner of the paper.

The Record’s Kansas City-based attorney, Bernie Rhodes, has sent a letter to local law enforcement demanding that they not review any information on the devices until a court hearing can be scheduled. 

“I can assure you that the Record will take every step to obtain relief for the damages your heavy-handed actions have already caused my client,” the letter said. 

The raids have cast the 1,900-person city of Marion, located about an hour’s drive north of Wichita, into a national firestorm. Legal experts and advocates for a free press have said the seizure of reporters’ work products is illegal and reflects increased hostility toward the media. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and more than 30 news organizations, including the New York Times, Dow Jones (parent company of The Wall Street Journal) and the Washington Post, have written to the chief of the Marion Police Department to condemn its raid on the Record.

Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody said Monday the Kansas Bureau of Investigation is now the lead investigator of the case. He has declined to answer questions about the raid but previously said he believes the judicial system will be vindicated once the entire story is made public.

The Record investigated Cody before he took office but didn’t publish a story, Meyer said; Cody has since stopped providing the paper with a long-published blotter of law-enforcement activities.

Since the raid, the Record has received support and new subscribers from around the country, said Meyer, whose family has owned the newspaper for 25 years. But he has heard little from locals in his hometown of Marion, where he retired after working as an editor for the Milwaukee Journal and as a journalism professor. 

“They’re afraid in a small town that if they cross the powers that be, they will be punished,” Meyer said. 

Tim Stauffer, president of the Kansas Press Association and managing editor of the Iola Register, said he had never heard of a similar incident happening in Kansas. 

“The federal Privacy Protection Act is designed to protect journalists against exactly what happened here,” he said, referencing a 1980 federal law that requires law enforcement to subpoena journalists’ work product rather than execute a search warrant.

The raid followed a complicated series of events in Marion that began on Aug. 1, when local restaurateur Kari Newell asked Meyer and a Record reporter to leave a public meet-and-greet with Congressman Jake LaTurner, held at one of her food establishments.

A source reached out to the reporter on Facebook after the event, suggesting Newell had been driving without a license after an impaired driving conviction 15 years ago. 

The source later shared through Facebook Messenger a copy of a letter addressed to Newell from the Kansas Department of Revenue that outlined how Newell could get her driver’s license back, Meyer said. 

The Record reporter used Newell’s date of birth and driver’s license—but the reporter’s own name—to find the document on a state website to verify its authenticity, he said.

The paper decided not to publish a story, in part because the source is connected to Newell’s husband, with whom she is engaged in divorce proceedings. 

But the source separately provided the same information to Councilwoman Ruth Herbel, whose home was also raided last week. Herbel couldn’t be reached for comment. 

Herbel passed the information along to at least one city staff member in advance of a meeting about whether or not to approve a liquor license that Newell was seeking, which could be precluded by an impaired driving charge, Meyer said.

At that city council meeting on Aug, 7, Newell accused the newspaper of sharing her driving records with Herbel. 

Meyer said neither he nor the reporter who received the tip shared the personal information or downloaded it from the state website. 

Newell’s liquor license was granted. 

A few days later, police officers and sheriff’s deputies raided the Record’s office and the home Meyer shared with his mother. They had a search warrant signed by Eighth Judicial District Magistrate Judge Laura Viar that named Newell and a potential identity-theft crime.  

Record staff tried to get a copy of the probable cause statement justifying the need for a search. But one of Viar’s employees said there was no probable cause statement on file, Meyer said. 

The Eighth Judicial District said it couldn’t comment on a matter that could come before the court.

Newell has said she was surprised to learn of the raid, which happened while she was out of town. She has received nasty messages and fake reviews on her businesses since then, she said.

“It’s truly beyond me how people think I alone am capable of having a newspaper raided,” she said in a statement. “Even in small town America we have the same processes any larger city does to make this happen.”

Write to Shannon Najmabadi at [email protected]