Police chief who led raid of Kansas paper is suspended
identity theft or computer crimes.
The raids came after a restaurant owner accused the newspaper of illegally accessing information about her. A spokesman for the agency that maintains those records has said the online search by one of the paper’s reporters was probably legal even though the reporter needed personal information about the restaurant owner that a tipster provided to look up her driving record.
The newspaper’s publisher, Eric Meyer, has said the identity theft allegations simply provided a convenient excuse for the search after his reporters had been digging for background information on Cody, who was appointed this summer.
Legal experts believe the raid violated a federal privacy law or a state law shielding journalists from having to identify sources or turn over unpublished material to law enforcement.
Video of the raid on Meyer’s home shows how distraught his 98-year-old mother, Joan, became as officers searched through their belongings. Meyer said he believes that stress contributed to her death a day later.
Another reporter has filed a federal lawsuit against the police chief over the raid.
The police chief who led a highly criticized raid of a small Kansas newspaper has been suspended, the mayor confirmed to the Associated Press on Saturday.
Marion Mayor Dave Mayfield said in a text he had suspended Chief Gideon Cody on Thursday. He declined to discuss his decision further and did not say whether Cody was still being paid.
Voice messages and emails from the AP seeking comment from Cody’s lawyers were not immediately returned Saturday.
The Aug. 11 searches of the Marion County Record’s office and the homes of its publisher and a City Council member have been sharply criticized, putting Marion at the center of a debate over the media protections offered by the 1st Amendment.
Cody’s suspension is a reversal for the mayor, who previously said he would wait for results from a state police investigation before taking action.
Vice Mayor Ruth Herbel, whose home was also raided Aug. 11, praised Cody’s suspension as “the best thing that can happen to Marion right now” as the central Kansas town of about 1,900 people struggles to move forward from being under the national spotlight.
“We can’t duck our heads until it goes away, because it’s not going to go away until we do something about it,” Herbel said.
Cody has said little publicly since the raids other than posting a defense of them on the Police Department’s Facebook page. In court documents he filed to get the search warrants, he argued that he had probable cause to believe the newspaper and Herbel had violated state laws against