Raid of Kansas Newspaper Sparks 1A Controversy

NY Post composite 8/15/23

The police chief whose “Gestapo”-style raid on a small town newspaper has become the focus of national outrage was being investigated by its reporters over claims of alleged sexual misconduct.

The NY Post reports Gideon Cody and every officer in the Marion Police Department stormed into the Marion County Record’s offices Friday with a search warrant where they seized computers and servers.They also raided the home of the editor and publisher, Eric Meyer, and his 98-year-old mother Joan Meyer, the paper’s co-owner.

She died the following day of “shock and grief,” Meyer said, stressed and unable to sleep when police seized her computer and smart speaker, as well as her son’s cellphone and even his router.

The Marion County Record, published weekly, has served the rural communities of Marion County (pop. 11,712) since 1869, and until now had never been at the center of a national battle over freedom of the press.

But as First Amendment advocates spoke out against the raid, it emerged the newspaper had been investigating Cody, 54, after receiving an “outpouring of calls” claiming he had retired from his last police post to avoid demotion over sexual misconduct allegations.

Cody joined the Marion County Police Department in late April after retiring as a captain in Kansas City, Mo., where he worked for 24 years.

Eric Meyer told The Handbasket substack his outlet had been contacted by Cody’s former colleagues about the claims of sexual misconduct, but that the six-plus anonymous sources ultimately never went on the record and reporters couldn’t obtain Cody’s personnel file.

The explosive claims – as well as the identities of who made them – were contained on one of the computers seized during the raids at the newspaper’s office, 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,” Meyer told The Handbasket.

A search warrant for the raid says it was issued over an allegation of “identity theft” by its reporters.

The claim was made by local restaurateur Kari Newell, after someone sent the paper and a member of the local council documents which showed she had a DUI, which would make it illegal for her to have a liquor license.

Meanwhile The NY Times reports a lawyer for The Record demanded that the town’s Police Department not review any information on the devices it seized until a court hearing could be scheduled. The lawyer, Bernard J. Rhodes, said in a letter to Marion’s police chief, Gideon Cody, that he was offering the department “an opportunity to mitigate my client’s damages from the illegal searches.”