[The publisher of the Marion County Record says local law
enforcement unleashed “Gestapo tactics” on his organization over
the weekend.]
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A POLICE RAID ON A KANSAS NEWSPAPER COULD FORCE THE DOJ’S HAND  
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Matt Ford
August 15, 2023
The New Republic
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_ The publisher of the Marion County Record says local law
enforcement unleashed “Gestapo tactics” on his organization over
the weekend. _

The offices of The Marion County Record, Mark Reinstein/Shutterstock

 

A local police department in Kansas did something extraordinary on
Friday: It effectively stopped a newspaper from printing the news. The
Marion Police Department raided the offices of the _Marion County
Register,_ which serves a community of fewer than 2,000 people, and
the home of its owner and publisher at the end of last week.

According to the _Record,_ which published an unbylined article
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week, cops seized the newspaper’s computers and servers, the
personal cell phones of staff members, and what the newspaper
described as “other equipment unrelated to the scope of their
search.” While the officers obtained a warrant for the search from a
local judge, there are countless questions swirling around about what,
if anything, justified such an outsized reaction from law enforcement.

The story took a tragic turn on Sunday when the _Record_ reported that
stress from the raid had contributed to the death of the paper’s
owner. “Stressed beyond her limits and overwhelmed by hours of shock
and grief after illegal police raids on her home and the _Marion
County Record_ newspaper office Friday, 98-year-old newspaper co-owner
Joan Meyer, otherwise in good health for her age, collapsed Saturday
afternoon and died at her home,” the paper reported. The article
claimed that she had not been able to eat or sleep due to her distress
after the Friday raid.

Naturally, in America, reporters are not above the law. But they and
their publishers are protected at all times by the First Amendment and
its guarantees of a free press. Local newspapers are especially
important as the metaphorical nerve system of any healthy community.
If it turns out that this raid’s justifications do not hold up to
scrutiny, then state and federal officials should drop the hammer on
the police department for what would be nothing less than an attack on
American democracy.

And initial signs don’t offer much hope that this show of force
truly served the public interest. The raid’s origins, according to
the _Record,_ came from a dispute between the newspaper, local
officials, and a local business owner. Kari Newell, who owns a
restaurant in Marion, reportedly accused
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Marion Vice Mayor Ruth Herbel of inappropriately accessing records
about her drunk-driving conviction in 2008 during a town council
meeting last Monday. That prior conviction could have made it more
difficult for Newell to obtain a liquor license in the town.

According to the _Record,_ Newell also accused the newspaper of
illegally obtaining information about the conviction. The newspaper
denied that charge in its unbylined article over the weekend. “The
_Record_ did not seek out the information,” it reported
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“Rather, it was provided by a source who sent it to the newspaper
via social media and also sent it to Herbel. After attempting to
verify that the information was accurate and had been obtained, as the
source had claimed, from a public website, the _Record_ decided not to
publish it.”

The _Record_ also claimed that one of its reporters attempted to
verify the information by checking an unidentified state website,
which involved giving her name and clicking on a consent form
“verifying that she did not plan to disseminate the
information—because, in fact, she did not plan to and did not do
so.” It reported that Newell also drove without a license after it
was suspended because of her 2008 conviction. As part of its
reporting, the _Record_ said it looked into whether local police knew
that Newell didn’t have a valid driver’s license and let her off
for driving without a license nonetheless.

How this dispute led to a police search on Friday is unclear.
Newell’s staff had previously kicked out _Record_ reporters from a
meet-and-greet event held by Representative Jake LaTurner, according
to _The Kansas Reflector_
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“Journalists have become the dirty politicians of today, twisting
narrative for bias[ed] agendas, full of muddied half-truths,” Newell
wrote on Facebook, according to an excerpt posted by the _Reflector._
“We rarely get facts that aren’t baited with misleading
insinuations.” The _Record_ published an article responding to
Newell’s allegations on Thursday.

On Friday morning, cops showed up at the paper’s offices and
provided a two-page search warrant that alleged, according to the
newspaper, that officers believed that “identity theft” and
“unlawful computer acts” had been committed in relation to
Newell’s information. Further details on the criminal investigation
itself are scarce. Law enforcement officials are supposed to provide
an affidavit to a local magistrate judge to establish probable cause.
The _Record_ said it sought to obtain that affidavit from the local
district court, which “issued a signed statement saying no affidavit
was on file.”

State and local police officials are keeping largely mum about the
raid as well. Gideon Cody, Marion’s chief of police, told _The New
York Times_
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that “when the rest of the story is available to the public, the
judicial system that is being questioned will be vindicated.” The
Kansas Bureau of Investigation said in a statement to the _Reflector_
that it “began an investigation into allegations of criminal
wrongdoing” at the local police department’s request last Tuesday
and that the investigation was “ongoing.” The _Record_ said it did
not know when it would get its computers and servers back from the
police.

News of the raid provoked a sharp backlash from other Kansas
publications and from national press freedom organizations. “We
could express our outrage at what is happening here,” _The Wichita
Eagle_ and _The Kansas City Star_ said in a joint editorial on Monday.
“But we probably couldn’t say it any better than the 98-year-old
Joan Meyer, a newspaperwoman since 1953: ‘These are Hitler tactics
and something has to be done.’” The Reporters Committee for
Freedom of the Press, a nonprofit press freedom group, published a
letter [[link removed]]
condemning the raid on behalf of itself and at least 30 other national
news outlets.

“Based on public reporting, the search warrant that has been
published online, and your public statements to the press, there
appears to be no justification for the breadth and intrusiveness of
the search—particularly when other investigative steps may have been
available—and we are concerned that it may have violated federal law
strictly limiting federal, state, and local law enforcement’s
ability to conduct newsroom searches,” the organization said. “We
urge you to immediately return the seized material to the _Record,_ to
purge any records that may already have been accessed, and to initiate
a full independent and transparent review of your department’s
actions.”

The RCFP noted in its letter that the police department’s actions
also appear to have violated federal law. Under the Privacy Protection
Act of 1980, it is unlawful for police to seize journalist work
products or documentary materials. Under court precedents, that
protection applies even if the material was itself based on unlawfully
obtained information, so long as the newspaper and its journalists did
not break the law themselves to obtain it. For that reason, it is
extraordinarily rare for law enforcement agencies at any level of
government to raid a newspaper’s offices.

“Our first priority is to be able to publish next week, but we also
want to make sure no other news organization is ever exposed to the
Gestapo tactics we witnessed today,” Eric Meyer, the newspaper’s
publisher, said in a statement to the _Record_ over the weekend. “We
will be seeking the maximum sanctions possible under law.” According
to local news outlets, this would likely involve a federal civil
rights lawsuit against the department.

That should be the floor for any possible response. If the raid is
truly as unwarranted as the _Record_ claims, then state and local
leaders should consider whether the Marion Police Department should
exist in its current form and with its current leadership. The Justice
Department in Washington, D.C., should also look into whether federal
civil rights laws that address local officials who violate
constitutional rights might apply in this situation. American
democracy cannot survive if local police get to decide when newspapers
can or can’t publish, and our elected officials should act
accordingly.

Matt Ford [[link removed]] @fordm
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Matt Ford is a staff writer at _The New Republic._

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_See also the article from The Guardian: _

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* Marion Kansas Police Raid on Newspaper; Marion County Register;
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