Why did this police department raid the local newspaper? Journalists decry attack on press

Days after police officers raided and seized personal cell phones, computers, a file server and other equipment from reporters at a local news outlet in Kansas, the Marion County Attorney Joel Ensey said he withdrew a search warrant previously issued to police to obtain information they were seeking.

Experts in laws protecting the press are slamming the police department for requesting a search warrant and those issuing the warrant, arguing the move violates the U.S. Constitution and other laws granting journalists protection from searches and seizures. The police department defended its decision to seek the information from the Marion County Record newspaper in a recent Facebook post.

On Wednesday in a news release obtained by KSHB-TV in Kansas City, Missouri, Ensey said he "submitted a proposed order asking the court to release the evidence seized" and asked police to return the items they took back to the news organization. He said there was “insufficient evidence exists to establish a legally sufficient nexus between the alleged crime and the places searched and the items seized."

The case garnered national attention after several news organizations condemned the police department.

"This kind of raid of a newsroom is a direct and fragrant insult on freedom of the press," said David Loy, a legal expert from the First Amendment Coalition, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization based in California that promotes free press.

In an added layer to the case, Joan Meyer, the 98-year-old co-owner of the Marion County Record, died two days following the raid. She was the mother of the newspaper's publisher, Eric Meyer. Following the police raid, Eric Meyer wrote that his mother said, “These are Hitler tactics, and something has to be done.”

Why did the police raid The Marion Record?

The signed warrant says police were looking for information related to a "Marion restauranteur named Kari Newell (who) went before the city council Monday to angrily – and falsely – accuse the Record of illegally obtaining drunken-driving information about her and supplying it to a council member," according to Meyer, who wrote about the incident in an article updated Friday,

Meyer said the information was not obtained illegally, and provided by a source who "contacted the Record via social media and independently sent the material to both the newspaper and the council member."

In a public Facebook post, the police department wrote that "as much as I would like to give everyone details on a criminal investigation I cannot." And it defended its decision.

Police:Conduct 'chilling' raid of Kansas newspaper, publisher's home

"Speaking in generalities, the federal Privacy Protection Act, 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000aa-2000aa-12, does protect journalists from most searches of newsrooms by federal and state law enforcement officials," the post from the department reads. "It is true that in most cases, it requires police to use subpoenas, rather than search warrants, to search the premises of journalists unless they themselves are suspects in the offense that is the subject of the search."

Meyer told Marisa Kabas, the writer of the Substack newsletter The Handbasket, that police were potentially collecting information after they received news tips about the town's police chief's involvement with sexual misconduct incidents in a previous role.

He said that when Police Chief Gideon Cody "was named chief just two months ago, we got an outpouring of calls from his former co-workers making a wide array of allegations against him saying 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."

The Marion Record didn't publish a related story "because we never could get any of them to go on the record, and we never could get his personnel file," Meyer told the writer. "But the allegations—including the identities of who made the allegations—were on one of the computers that got seized."

The legal controversy: Was the raid just?

The Marion Record's publisher Eric Meyer said the company will "file a federal suit against the City of Marion and those involved in the search."

"We will be seeking the maximum sanctions possible under the law," Meyer wrote Sunday in a news article for The Marion Record. He will pursue the lawsuit after hearing from legal experts who "were unanimous in saying violated multiple state and federal laws, including the U.S. Constitution, and multiple court rulings," he wrote.

Several media organizations signed a letter condemning the police raid and requesting the police department return the materials they gathered in the raid to the news outlet.

The letter sent to Mario Police Chief Gideon Cody by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press on Sunday states that, "under any circumstances, the raid and seizure appeared overbroad and unduly intrusive, and raised concerns that the execution of the warrant may have violated federal law strictly limiting federal, state, and local law enforcement’s ability to conduct newsroom searches."

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Loy, of the First Amendment Coalition, said it appears the newsroom was doing basic investigative journalism. "For everything I've heard in this case, there's no legitimate reason for a search warrant of this newsroom," he said.

Who was Joan Meyer? How did she die?

In a news article published in the Marion County Record, Eric Meyer wrote that his mother Joan Meyer "had not been able to eat after police showed up at the door of her home Friday with a search warrant in hand. Neither was she able to sleep Friday night."

An obituary in The Wichita Eagle states that Joan Meyer "spent each of her almost 10 decades of life in about a six-block radius of Marion, (Kansas), but she was a worldly woman who had an impactful newspaper career, a vigilance with words, a powerful sense of propriety and equally unflinching opinions."

Contact Kayla Jimenez at kjimenez@usatoday.com. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter, at @kaylajjimenez.