A reporter who works at a small Kansas newspaper filed a federal lawsuit against her town’s police chief last Wednesday after officers raided the newspaper’s operations in early August.
Deb Gruver brought forward her lawsuit against Marion Police Chief, Gideon Cody, accusing the chief of violating her constitutional rights during a search raid of the newsroom that resulted in the seizure of digital equipment including cell phones, computers, and other newspaper assets.
Gruver says that when the officers raided the newsroom, Police Chief Cody handed her a copy of the search warrant and that when she said she needed to call the paper’s publisher, Cody snatched her personal cell phone out of her hands.
After filing the lawsuit, Gruver shared a statement explaining, “I’m standing up for journalists across the country.” She adds, “It is our constitutional right to do this job without fear of harassment or retribution, and our constitutional rights are always worth fighting for.”
The Newspaper, the Marion County Record, operates out of the small town of Marion, Kansas. The town, which has a population of just under 2,000 people, became the center of a national debate over press protections under the First Amendment.
The August 11th raid was captured on surveillance footage and shows officers entering the newsroom and collecting documents and digital devices while reporters questioned the police’s actions.
Three weeks after the raid, a judge ordered authorities to hand over the electronic records they seized and to destroy any copies of those records or any photographs they took during the raids. Marion County prosecutor Joel Ensey determined that “insufficient evidence exists to establish a legally sufficient nexus between this alleged crime and the places searched and the items seized.”
The police raid allegedly took place on the belief that a reporter, Phyllis Zorn, illegally obtained the driving records of a local business owner, Kari Newell. The newspaper was working on a piece on Newell and was investigating claims that Newell was driving under the influence during a time when she was seeking a liquor license for her restaurant business. The paper eventually decided not to publish the piece.
Following the raid at the newsroom, the home of the newspaper’s co-owner and mother of co-owner Eric Meyer, Joan Meyer, was also raided. That raid was captured on surveillance footage and shows the 98-year-old Joan Meyer using a walking cane and yelling at officers to leave her home and put her belongings down. “Don’t you touch any of that stuff,” Joan can be heard saying to the officers. “This is my house.”
As officers continue into other parts of her home, Joan can be seen following them and yelling, “I want to see what they’re doing.” Joan, who is visibly distressed in the footage, passed away a day later. Her son described her death as being the result of undue stress, leaving her unable to sleep or eat. “How dare they take the last day of her life and make her filled with fear and anger,” Eric Meyer shared in an interview with CNN.
In the same interview, Meyer reprimanded the police department’s behavior, saying, “This is the type of stuff that, you know, that Vladimir Putin does, that Third World dictators do. This is Gestapo tactics from World War II.”
In her lawsuit, Gruver argues that the search warrant was supposed to focus only on digital equipment that was believed to be used in obtaining the driving records. Gruver maintains that the actions to obtain the driving records were done by another reporter. By conducting the search in this manner, Gruver maintains that the raid was a violation of federal privacy laws or state laws that are designed to protect journalists from having to turn over materials or identify sources related to unpublished content.
The Kansas Bureau of Investigation is also conducting an investigation into the raid but has not released any updates or information regarding their investigation. It’s expected that additional lawsuits might be brought forward including a lawsuit from the publisher claiming wrongful death.
