Publisher of newspaper raided by police says timing of probable cause affidavit ‘suspicious’

The police raid of a small town newspaper in east-central Kansas has turned into a national fight over First Amendment press protections, as the paper’s publisher says police documents for the search are “suspicious.”

The Marion County Record was raided by local police last week. Police said the raid was spurred by an invasion of privacy investigation, but publisher Eric Meyer speculated it could also be due to his paper’s separate investigations into the town’s police chief. 

“We finally were able to obtain the probable cause affidavit that was supposed to support the search warrant. It was filed three days after the searches were conducted, which is a little suspicious,” Meyer said in a CNN interview Wednesday.

Police claimed that the paper illegally obtained and shared the drunk driving record of a local restaurateur who is attempting to get a liquor license. Meyer said that a source made allegations that the restaurateur leveraged a relationship with local police to knowingly drive without a license for years, but the paper never published the claim.

Meyer said that police accused the Record of sharing that information improperly with city officials, but those officials claimed to receive those documents from the same source and not the newspaper.

“Search warrants are supposed to be a last resort if you can’t get the information any other way. They could have asked, we would have given it to them,” he said.

The Record never published the findings of its investigation into the town’s police chief, which included claims Meyer said could not be verified. He said that investigation may have factored into the raid.

“There are oddities about [the chief’s] coming here. There are also long-standing animosities in this town of various different factions,” he said.

The newspaper is challenging the raid in court, backed by prominent press freedom activist groups.

“These are Hitler tactics,” said the newspaper’s attorney Bernie Rhodes. “I can assure you that the Record will take every step to obtain relief for the damages your heavy-handed actions have already caused my client.”

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.

“It seems like one of the most aggressive police raids of a news organization or entity in quite some time,” said Sharon Brett, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas, adding that it seemed “quite an alarming abuse of authority.”

Marion police Chief Gideon Cody defended the raid, telling The Associated Press that while federal law usually requires a subpoena in addition to 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.”