A Kansas Police Force Comes Under Constitutional Criticism After Raiding a Newspaper’s Office

A small newspaper and a police department in Kansas are at the center of a dispute over freedom of speech that is being watched around the country after police raided the office of the local newspaper and the home of its owner and publisher.Officials with the Marion Police Department confiscated computers and cellphones in the Friday raid, prompting press freedom watchdogs to condemn the actions of local authorities as a blatant violation of the U.S. Constitution’s protection of a free press. The Marion County Record’s editor and publisher, Eric Meyer, worked with his staff Sunday to reconstruct stories, ads, and other materials for its next edition, appearing Wednesday.A search warrant tied Friday morning’s raids, led by the Marion police chief, Gideon Cody, to a dispute between the newspaper and a local restaurant owner, Kari Newell. She is accusing the newspaper of invading her privacy and illegally accessing information about her and her driving record, and suggested that the newspaper targeted her after she threw Mr. Meyer and a reporter out of her restaurant during a political event.While Mr. Meyer saw Ms. Newell’s complaints — which he said were untrue — as prompting the raids, he also believes the newspaper’s aggressive coverage of local politics and issues played a role. He said the newspaper was examining Mr. Cody’s past work with the Kansas City, Missouri, police as well.“This is the type of stuff that, you know, that Vladimir Putin does, that Third World dictators do,” Mr. Meyer said during an interview in his office. “This is Gestapo tactics from World War II.”Mr. Cody said Sunday that the raid was legal and tied to an investigation.The raids occurred in a town of about 1,900 people, nestled among rolling prairie hills, about 150 miles southwest of Kansas City, making the small weekly newspaper the latest to find itself in the headlines and possibly targeted for its reporting.Last year in New Hampshire, the publisher of a weekly newspaper accused the state attorney general’s office of government overreach after she was arrested for allegedly publishing advertisements for local races without properly marking them as political advertising. In Las Vegas, a former Democratic elected official, Robert Telles, is scheduled to face trial in November for allegedly fatally stabbing a Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter, Jeff German, after Mr. German wrote articles critical of Mr. Telles and his managerial conduct.Mr. Meyer said that on Friday, one Record reporter suffered an injury to a finger when Mr. Cody wrested her cellphone out of her hand, according to the report. The newspaper’s surveillance video showed officers reading that reporter her rights while Mr. Cody watched, though she wasn’t arrested or detained. Newspaper employees were hustled out of the building while the search continued for more than 90 minutes, according to the footage.Meanwhile, Mr. Meyer said, police simultaneously raided his home, seizing computers, his cellphone, and the home’s internet router.Yet as Mr. Meyer fielded messages from reporters and editors as far away as London and reviewed footage from the newsroom’s surveillance camera, Ms. Newell said she was receiving death threats from as far away. She said the Record engages in “tabloid trash reporting” and was trying to hush her up.Ms. Newell said she threw Mr. Meyer and the Record reporter out of the event for a Republican U.S. congressman, Jake LaTurner, at the request of others who are upset with the “toxic” newspaper. On the town’s main street, one storefront included a handmade “Support Marion PD” sign.”The police chief and other officials also attended and were acknowledged at the reception, and the Marion Police Department highlighted the event on its Facebook page.Ms. Newell said she believes the newspaper violated the law to get her personal information as it checked on the status of her driver’s license following a 2008 drunken driving conviction and other driving violations.The newspaper countered that it received that information unsolicited, which it verified through public online records. It eventually decided not to run an article because it wasn’t sure the source who supplied it had obtained it legally. But the newspaper did run an article on the city council meeting, in which Ms. Newell herself confirmed she’d had a DUI conviction and that she had continued to drive even after her license was suspended.A two-page search warrant, signed by a local judge, lists Ms. Newell as the victim of alleged crimes by the newspaper. When the newspaper asked for a copy of the probable cause affidavit required by law to issue a search warrant, the district court issued a signed statement saying no such affidavit was on file, the Record reported.Mr. Cody, the police chief, indicated that probable cause affidavits were used to get the search warrants. When asked for a copy, Mr. Cody replied in an email late Sunday that the affidavits would be available “once charges are filed.”Mr. Cody defended the raid, saying in an email to the Associated Press that while federal law usually requires a subpoena — not just a search warrant — to raid a newsroom, there is an exception “when there is reason to believe the journalist is taking part in the underlying wrongdoing.”Press freedom and civil rights organizations said that police, the local prosecutor’s office and the judge who signed off on the search warrant overstepped their authority.

A Kansas Police Force Comes Under Constitutional Criticism After Raiding a Newspaper’s Office

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