Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody enlisted the support of local and state law enforcement officials in the days before he led raids on the local newspaper office, the publisher’s home and the home of a city councilwoman.
Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody has resigned, less than two months after he instigated a widely covered raid on a local newspaper that culminated in a federal lawsuit and one woman’s death.
Mackenzie Clark/Lawrence Times
”The fiasco in Marion generated national attention. This dustup in Douglas County will likely fly under the radar, given that it was conducted in the far more restrained forum of legal filings. But we should all be on notice,” Clay Wirestone writes in this Kansas Reflector column.
House Minority Leader Vic Miller said Tuesday he would introduce legislation to take away a magistrate’s power to authorize a search warrant, addressing one aspect of the circumstances surrounding the raid on the Marion County Record.
Marion County Record co-owner Joan Meyer leaned into her walker and stood up to law enforcement personnel executing a search warrant in her living room during a bizarre series of legally questionable raids of her residence, the newspaper’s office and a city council member’s home.
”When powerful people go after journalists and news outlets, they go after everyone. … Let’s look at outrages big and small from across the United States,” Clay Wirestone writes in this Kansas Reflector column.
Journalists at the Marion County Record worked late into the night to publish their first issue since the widely-criticized raid. “SEIZED… but not silenced,” its headline read.
The Society of Professional Journalists’ board unanimously offered $20,000 to the Marion County Record for legal costs in wake of the seizure of newspaper and personal property by local law enforcement.
The top law enforcement officer in Kansas appeared to justify a Marion County search warrant that led to an unprecedented raid on a local newspaper and potentially contributed to the death of the paper’s co-owner.
Marion County police on Saturday defended their unprecedented raid on a newspaper office and the publisher’s home, and the publisher’s mother died from stress.
