On Wednesday, one of the reporters from a small Kansas newspaper raided earlier this month filed a federal lawsuit against the police commander.
According to the lawsuit, Marion County Record employee Deb Gruver says that police chief Gideon Cody violated her constitutional rights by forcefully removing her personal smartphone during a workplace search. Following searches on August 11 at the homes of the newspaper’s publisher and a City Council member, the town has found itself in the heart of a First Amendment debate.
The Associated Press reached out to Cody for comment through email and text message on Wednesday. He has not made any public remarks since the raids, save from defending them on the police department’s Facebook page. According to the documentation he presented in court to secure the search warrants, the newspaper and City Council member Ruth Herbel, whose apartment was also searched, were accused of breaking state laws against identity theft and computer crimes.
The newspaper’s publisher, Eric Meyer, has stated that he believes the identity theft allegations provided a convenient excuse for the search, and the police chief was extremely dissatisfied with Gruver’s investigation into his background with the Kansas City, Missouri, Police Department prior to his hiring in Marion earlier this year. Meyer claims he will file his own legal action.
The town of Record, situated about 150 miles (161 kilometers) southwest of Kansas City, Missouri, and its newspaper, The Record, are well-known for their thorough coverage of local politics.
Gruver, a veteran journalist of more than three decades, said in her case, “I’m standing up for journalists across the country.” While working for newspapers in Kansas, Wyoming, and Indiana, she received recognition for her reporting.
“Our constitutional rights are always worth fighting for,” said Gruver, who had the words “Freedom of the press” tattooed on her right forearm the same day she filed her lawsuit.
The municipal administration contacted outside counsel Jennifer Hill and city attorney Brian Bina about the situation. The Associated Press left voicemails with both lawyers, but none answered the phone promptly.
Authorities began investigating the newspaper when a local restaurant owner claimed that reporters had used her private information to find that her driver’s license had been suspended and she had been arrested for DUI. The agency’s spokesperson certified that the reporter’s search on the public website was legal.
The warrant clearly indicated, according to the lawsuit, that the search would be confined to the technology used by another reporter at the magazine to get access to the identified data. When Cody handed Gruver a copy of the warrant, she was ready to call the publisher when he seized her phone.
The lawsuit says that Chief Cody “acted in an unreasonable and unnecessarily violent manner” by seizing Ms. Gruver’s personal cellular phone, despite the fact that the seizure went beyond the scope of the arbitrary and invalid search warrant.
Despite the fact that Gruver, another reporter, and an office administrator were never held, one of the officers had them wait outside in the heat for three hours while they observed the search.
After examining Meyer’s newspaper office, detectives went to the residence he shared with his 98-year-old mother. His mother’s anguish during the raid is captured on tape as law enforcement agents go through family belongings. Meyer added that he believes anxiousness had a factor in his mother Joan Meyer’s death the next day.
Lawyers believe that a state or federal privacy legislation was violated during the newspaper raid, which would have prevented anonymous sources and draft stories from being given over to authorities.
The authorities returned the gadgets they had seized during the searches, including computers and phones, when the prosecutor found there was insufficient evidence to sustain the seizure. A judge ordered on Tuesday that all digital copies of the newspaper’s data be erased.
The Kansas Bureau of Investigation has provided no information on the newspaper’s actions.
What municipal governments may do is unknown. At its meeting last week, the City Council refused to discuss the searches, and the mayor informed the Record that he would not comment until the KBI’s investigation was completed.