A weekly central Kansas newspaper and its publisher filed a federal lawsuit Monday over police raids last summer of its offices and the publisher’s home, accusing local officials of trying to silence the paper and causing the death of the publisher’s 98-year-old mother.
The lawsuit did not include a specific figure for potential damages. However, in a separate notice to local officials, the paper and its publisher said they believe they are due more than $10 million.
The lawsuit from the Marion County Record’s parent company and Eric Meyer, its editor and publisher, accuses the city of Marion, the Marion County Commission and five current and former local officials of violating free press rights and the right to be free from unreasonable law enforcement searches guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. The lawsuit also notified the defendants that Meyer and the newspaper plan to add other claims, including that officials wrongly caused the death of Meyer’s mother the day after the raids, which the lawsuit attributes to a stress-induced heart attack.
Is that the newspaper that got their papers stolen or were raided or something the day they were going to run a story on the local sheriff, or is this a whole other bizarre confrontation between cops and print media?
[edit: repeated mentions of sheriff should read police chief]
The editor of the paper is an old-school journalist (and actually taught journalism). He took over the paper when his mom wanted to retire. Because he had integrity, he was sitting on two stories. The first was that the recently-hired sheriff had left his old job moments before getting fired for sexual harassment; he’d been pursuing the story since before the sheriff was chosen but felt he didn’t have enough corroboration to print. He did, however, repeatedly try to warn the commissioners they should do some more research on the sheriff before hiring him. (Spoilerr: they didn’t.)
The second story was that a local restaurant owner, who was applying for a lucrative liquor license, had been convicted of DUI in ?2008, had never reapplied for her driver’s license after, and had been illegally driving without a license for the last ?15 years. Oh, and if you have a DUI in Kansas, you’re not supposed to be able to get a liquor license. He was holding off on that story because he thought he was likely provided the information out of spite (likely the soon-to-be ex-husband). He did report it to the local police for a reason I can’t recall and am not going to bother looking up. Also, the ex-husband had also supplied the same information to the deputy mayor.
Note that the restaurant owner and the sheriff were aware of the stories, and that they were on hold.
There’s bad relations between the restaurant owner and the newspaper guy: the restaurant owner keeps trying to … ?undermine ?provoke him? Something like that: a local politician holds a meet and greet at her restaurant and she refuses to let the reporters in, then gets pissy when they interview the guy on the sidewalk, etc. She accuses them of leaking the DUI story to sabotage her chances with the liquor license, except it later turns out it was the deputy mayor, and all she was doing was asking if it was legal for them to give a liquor license to someone with a DUI.
This is where it gets a little cloudy, with both the sheriff and the restaurant owner trying to blame each other: sheriff says she came to him and wanted to lodge a complaint; restaurant owner says he heard it through the grapevine and came to her and asked her to file a complaint. Anyway. A complaint was filed. The sheriff then ignored federal law which says if you want access to newspaper records, in pretty much every case you do it through a subpoena. He fills out an application for a search warrant.
Having filled out the application (which is supposed to have all the supporting evidence attached), the sheriff was supposed to take it to the County Attorney for review, and then to the county judge for further review and a signature. In a sweeping case of the good ol’ boys network, it seems like the sheriff just skipped the County Attorney entirely, though that may have been with the County Attorney’s approval - the County Attorney was the restaurant owner’s brother in law. More good ol’ boys networking also meant that the county judge didn’t bother reviewing the non-existent “evidence” attached to the search warrant application and just signed off on it.
So the sheriff got an illegal search warrant and conducted an illegal raid on the newspaper. But they targeted the entire paper, not just the reporter who was working on the restaurant story. They specifically took the personal phone from the reporter working on the sheriff’s story (injuring her hand in the process), as well as searching her desk and going through the notes and files on the sheriff’s story. They then seized all the computers, network storage, and electronic devices they could get their hands on. At the same time, they were also raiding the house of the deputy mayor and the newspaper owner (who had moved in to help take care of his mom).
The story blew up, the mom died, etc. Here’s the aftermath, as far as I’m aware: the county board let the sheriff stay in office another two months before they were finally pressured into
bribing himbuying out his contract. The sheriff has taken his big buyout and disappeared. The restaurant owner, despite it not being legal, got her liquor license and is annoyed that traffic to her restaurant declined after the story broke. The judge who signed the warrant got a slap on the wrist. As far as I can tell, the County Attorney has not gotten any kind of rebuke.The deputy mayor was ousted from office in the election a few months after the raid. The reporter working on the sheriff’s story, who was injured when her phone was taken, has PTSD and has retired from journalism. The reporter working on the restaurant owner’s story is still there but somewhat demoralized. The newspaper owner got a circulation boost and lost his mom, neither of which he wanted. And his mom is still dead.
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The Kansas Bureau of Intelligence, which was supposed to be investigating the incident, had repeatedly said they’re not investigating as much as it was originally said they were; I haven’t been able to find out if the initial reports of a robust investigation were exaggerated, or if they’re actually scaling back the investigation. It’s probably some combination of both. They supposedly handed off some part of it to the ?Colorado Bureau of Investigation, but that’s been pretty much radio silence since day one.
The county has been resisting efforts to get evidence and is very likely destroying it. It’s questionable if the county’s insurance will pay out, given that procedures weren’t followed to get the warrant, and that the county currently appear to be obstructing justice and likely destroying evidence. Which means that the local taxpayers may be on the hook for the bill - and they’re certainly on the hook for paying all the lawyers to defend the lawsuit. Giveb that there are less than 12,000 people living in Marion County, it’s likely to be a financially difficult time there. The newspaper owner doesn’t want to bankrupt or damage the city or county, but too many people involved are getting off easy (some have apparently been eased out by being promoted, I don’t have details on that); and he’s afraid of the precedent it’ll set it he just lets it go, especially with the combined rise in both authoritarianism and hostility toward the press.
[edit: repeated mentions of sheriff should read police chief. I noticed after I posted, and when I tried to search and replace, I went over the character limit. I can’t be arsed to move the text around, so everywhere it says sheriff, please know that I’m talking about the police chief.]
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