A state law enforcement agency under the direction of the Kansas office of attorney general has opened a criminal investigation into the events surrounding a local police raid of a small-town newspaper that has drawn widespread condemnation from First Amendment advocates and international press freedom groups.
But it remains unclear whether the Kansas Bureau of Investigation is focusing its probe around the actions of the Marion Police Department or the Marion County Record, where officers and sheriff’s deputies seized phones and equipment and effectively forced the 154-year-old weekly paper to shut down last week.
