Kansas Paper Raided by Police was Investigating Police Chief Over Sexual Misconduct Allegations
“When he was named Chief just two months ago, we got an outpouring of calls from his former co-workers making a wide array of allegations against him saying that he was about to be demoted at his previous job and that he retired to avoid demotion and punishment over sexual misconduct charges and other things.”
We all knew there was more to the story concerning the raid of the Marion County Record, a small Kansas newspaper.
We all thought it was about Kari Newell, the woman named in the search warrant. The paper received a tip about her drunk driving conviction and driving without a license. The reporters never ran the story because they didn’t know how the source obtained the information. They handed the tip over to the police, Newell threw a fit in front of the city council, and the paper wrote an article detailing their side of the story.
Next thing the Marion County Record knew, the police raided the office and home of owner and publisher Eric Meyer over allegations of “identity theft and ‘unlawful acts concerning computers.'” His mother died less than 24 hours after the raid.
It turns out the Marian County Record was investigating Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody over sexual misconduct allegation.
Cody came to the Marion Police Department in April. He retired as a captain in Kansas City, MO.
Cody’s former colleagues reached out to the Marion County Record about the sexual misconduct allegations.
Marion County Record owner and publisher Eric Meyer spoke to the Handbasket substack:
EM: So the backstory that we haven’t told, because we don’t wanna get in trouble, is that we’ve been investigating the police chief [Gideon Cody]. When he was named Chief just two months ago, we got an outpouring of calls from his former co-workers making a wide array of allegations against him saying that he was about to be demoted at his previous job and that he retired to avoid demotion and punishment over sexual misconduct charges and other things.
We had half a dozen or more different anonymous sources calling in about that. Well, we never ran that because we never could get any of them to go on the record, and we never could get his personnel file. But the allegations—including the identities of who made the allegations—were on one of the computers that got seized. I may be paranoid that this has anything to do with it, but when people come and seize your computer, you tend to be a little paranoid.
Like Newell driving without a license, the paper never reported the allegations against Cody:
We’ve gathered a lot of information. Deb, one of our reporters, has worked for weeks on this story. And we kind of didn’t get anywhere with it. We tried to alert the city through backdoor channels that they needed to really look at his employment record. They said, “oh, we have,” and we talked to the Kansas City, Missouri Police where he was from, and the Human Resources Department said, “no, nobody’s ever looked at his record.” Then two days later, somebody did look at it after they’d already told us they’d done so.
But the Kansas City Missouri Police HR Department told us, they [the city of Marion] asked specifically for only those things in which he [Cody] had been convicted and disciplinary action had been taken. And so that’s all they gave him. This action wasn’t completed. So that was where we kind of had to leave the story. They went ahead and hired him.
Attorney Bernard Rhodes, the lawyer representing the Marion County Record, wrote in a letter to Cody that he “personally authorized” the raids.
“I represent the Marion County Record and am writing to offer you an opportunity to mitigate my client’s damages from the illegal searches you personally authorized, directed and conducted on Friday,” wrote Rhodes.
Rhodes demanded authorities “not review any information” on any devices or material they confiscated during their “illegal search.”
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
Forget about the cops executing the raid for a minute.
What really blows my mind is that they had a warrant signed by a magistrate to do so.
Welcome to the new, “fundamentally transformed” America.
Before Obama, the Constitution prohibited raiding Newspapers.
Now, pissant local cops do it with impunity.
No. Not really.
The constitution has never prohibited raiding newspapers. The constitution doesn’t even mention newspapers, and gives them no special status over any other kind of business. The idea that the news industry has a special constitutional role, and constitutes a “fourth estate”, and in consequence has special constitutional privileges, is just a myth that the industry invented and has consciously promoted to generations of gullible people. The “freedom of speech or of the press”, which Congress shall make no law to abridge, is simply the freedom of every person to express whatever they wish, whether orally or by publication. Reporters have this right only to the same extent as everyone else has it.
The Reason there is a Freedom of the Press clause in the United States Constitution is because TPTB used to regularly raid newspapers and destroy the printing presses.
Newspapers were synonymous with the Printing Press.
Please provide specifics.
I know of issues with the revolutionaries in the colonies having printed arguably seditious statements. I know some publishers were shut down during the course of the Civil War.
However, it was primarily mobs that destroyed printing presses.
Unless you’re talking about the Reformation. Lots of printing presses destroyed there – in Europe.
But the idea of the Freedom of the Press was certainly more generic than “because of papers being raided by cops.”
No, newspapers were not synonymous with the printing press. Newspapers were simply one among many uses to which presses were put, and the first amendment did not single out any one use for special protection.
I’m also not aware of these raids on newspapers in particular (as opposed to other publishing operations) that you claim were common in pre-revolutionary times and were particularly on the minds of those who ratified the 1st amendment.
Anderson Cooper says 1A guarantees him employment 😂
Anderson Cooper has probably never read the constitution.
Maybe Joe Biden and his merry band’s conduct example caused Gideon Cody to try his hand?
Judge Laura Viar is a magistrate judge in the 8th district in Kansas — she was elected in 2022 per that court’s webpage (https://8thjd.com/248/Honorable-Laura-E-Viar).
Per Ballotopedia, apparently she’s in a district that does ‘assisted appointments’, in which a local judicial nominating commission consisting of non-lawyers and lawyers who live in the district present a list of three to five names to the governor who selects an appointment. Non-lawyer members are appointed by local county commissions and lawyers are elected by fellow lawyers in the judicial district. Newly appointed judges serve for at least one year, after which they must stand for retention in the next even-year general election. If retained, the judge serves a four-year term and must stand for retention every four years after that point to remain in office.
Since her first term is listed as 2022, she should come up for her first retention election in 2024.
And that’s the time for the good citizens of the 8th district to remember what she did.
This sounds like a good system for selecting judges.
To be clear though, she was selected, not elected. She will serve 4 years without ever having faced a voter.
Correction, she will serve some period of time before she faces the voters but it isn’t 4 years.
Magistrates eh. It’s like they will sign anything these days.
They’re called “magistrate” instead of “judge” because they have no need to use judgment. That’s one job that could be done better by AI, or maybe a spring-loaded rubber stamp
I agree–that’s troubling–there are reports that the magistrate is a personal friend of Newell
I’m not surprised at all. The Magistrate was either bribed or blackmailed.
Why would a bribe be needed? I mean, you’d do it for a good friend, right?
Please. You’ve been around LI long enough to know I have at least some sense of dignity and honesty. No. I don’t do things like that for friends.
I fully expect judges and the like to do so, but do it for bribes. Just like congressmen, a lot of judges seem to be very very wealthy on a judge’s pay.
A hood friend wouldn’t put him in the position.
Ergh. Good!
It worked fine the first way 😉
Respectfully, we don’t know what the magistrate was told in the request for the warrant. It is very possible that she was lied to by the police. I’ll hold off on making a judgement on who is to blame for a while.
Meanwhile, 98 year old mother is still dead. She bloody died from the upset caused by the raid.
Who gets the lash for that?
Sounds like in the time he’s been there, the Chief has ingratiated himself with the powers that be. And maybe Newell is enough of a buddy to provide the spark for the Chief’s “investigation.”
It sounds like maybe those people calling the Record from KC had reason not to go on the record?
The United States of Corruption.
Where a badge and a gun will make you a King. When do we get to see the Chief of Police perp walked for violating the constitutional rights under the first amendment?
Fire the whole g**damned police department for conducting this raid. Using the color of law to hide his sexual indiscretion, and involving his officers and magistrate to do so.
Even if there isn’t any sexual indiscretion on his part, the raid is a travesty of ‘justice’. I’m absolutely certain the judge was lied to (or participated in the lie) for that warrant.
Is Bad Elk v US still valid?
Evidently not, in a great many places.
Shame when Progressives get ahold of the common law to upend it.
Wikipedia doesn’t think so, but their ‘documentation’ is (and IANAL) … thin.
No, it is not. Certainly not in Kansas, where the law specifically forbids resisting a false arrest.
unless it is superseded by a Federal court ruling. so when was it reversed?
It’s a common law exercise. When a specific law overrides it, the specific law has precedent. No superseding ruling necessary.
The Wiki entry on it (Bad Elk v US) is decent and explains why (especially if you read between the lines) it isn’t in effect most places.
So it’s not for purposes of intimidation or retaliation. Got it.
Sexual misconduct not explained is probably MeToo outrage, not anything of importance given that we are men and women.
Thank you.
Yep. Seems like the newspaper handled that pretty well.
The more of this kind of thing, raids on “the wrong house”, “I need to see your identification!” for sitting on a bench in a public park, and other such things, I have to know: Is it “a few bad apples among great people”? In short, the excuse given for the Gestapo?
We really need a publicly accessible database of LEO disciplined, dismissed/allowed to resign in lieu of discipline. While LEO are far more professional today than in the ’50s in terms of training and education or just POST certification requirements there are some folks who move from one agency to another to hide their shenanigans.
It ain’t a few bad apples. But, even if it was, it only takes one to ruin a bushel.
If I were using my position to violate the rights of kids it would be wrong. If my fellow teachers were doing it, but didn’t speak up, then they would share in my guilt.
Did I miss something? The newspaper was raided without having printed anything false or libelous?
Possession of gossip is a crime?
“We all thought it was about Kari Newell”
(Emma Peel voice): Not quite all!
(Rocky Rococo voice): You see? I told you.
Every person that played any role in this raid should be in jail for about five years to ponder their pitiful existence.