Video footage captured the police raid of a weekly Kansas newspaper, which has sparked outrage from prominent publications and free press groups.
On 11 August, police raided the Marion County Record’s office – as well as the home of the outlet’s publisher – seizing computers, cell phones and other reporting materials. The move effectively shut down publication.
Newly released footage, obtained by ABC News, shows police reading a reporter her rights, removing computers, and taking photographs of the office.
The paper’s 98-year-old co-owner, Joan Meyer, died a day after the raid after being too stressed to eat or sleep, her son and co-owner of the publication, Eric Meyer, told the outlet.
“How dare they take the last day of her life and make her filled with fear and anger,” Mr Meyer said. The Record said that the raids “contribute[d]” to her death, as she was “stressed beyond her limits and overwhelmed by hours of shock and grief” following the raids on the newspaper office and her home. Joan Meyer was “otherwise in good health,” the newspaper noted.
The raid came after articles were published about a restaurant owner who kicked reporters out of a meeting with Republican Rep Jake LaTurner. The Marion County Record received a tip from a source about a restaurant owner’s drunk driving record, and reporters tried to verify the information through government records, but ultimately didn’t publish anything.
At a city council meeting, the restaurant owner “falsely accused us of illegally obtaining the information,” Mr Meyer told the outlet, which prompted a search warrant.
“The federal Privacy Protection Act…does protect journalists from most searches of newsrooms by federal and state law enforcement officials,” the Marion, Kansas Police Department wrote in a statement on Facebook the day after the raid, adding that “in most cases” police use subpoenas instead of search warrants. However, the police added an exception to this rule: “unless they themselves are suspects in the offense that is the subject of the search.”
“As much as I would like to give everyone details on a criminal investigation I cannot. I believe when the rest of the story is available to the public, the judicial system that is being questioned will be vindicated,” the statement continued.
“Based on the reporting so far, the police raid of the Marion County Record on Friday appears to have violated federal law, the First Amendment, and basic human decency. Everyone involved should be ashamed of themselves,” wrote Seth Stern, Director of Advocacy for Freedom of the Press Foundation, shortly after the raid.
“If they think I’m gonna give up because they’ve made it difficult for us to put out a newspaper for one week, they’ve got another thing coming,” Mr Meyer told ABC News.
In a statement, the Kansas Bureau of Investigation (KBI) wrote that the Marion Police Department and Marion County attorney asked if it wanted to join “an investigation into allegations of illegal access and dissemination of confidential criminal justice information.” The KBI has been assisting since last Tuesday and assigned an agent to the case, however, “the KBI agent did not apply for the search warrants in question, and he was not present when the warrants were served.”
The statement continued, explaining that KBI Director Tony Mattivi “believes very strongly that freedom of the press is a vanguard of American democracy.” The statement added, “But another principle of our free society is equal application of the law…No one is above the law, whether a public official or a representative of the media.”
On Sunday, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press – along with 34 news organisations, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Associated Press, and Reuters – wrote a letter to the Marion County police chief “to condemn that raid.”
“Newsroom searches and seizures are among the most intrusive actions law enforcement can take with respect to free press, and the most potentially suppressive of free speech by the press and the public,” they wrote. The letter said that based on the public reporting so far, “there appears to be no justification for the breadth and intrusiveness of the search—particularly when other investigative steps may have been available.”
The letter also stated that the coalition believes the police “may have violated federal law,” and urged the police chief to return the seized materials to the Record.
Mr Meyer told Axios on Monday morning that he intends to file a lawsuit “to establish a clear precedent that this sort of behavior cannot be tolerated.”
