Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Fallout from the Marion, Kansas Newspaper Raid
In August 2023, local police raided the office of the Marion County Record newspaper and the homes of the reporters, supposedly in search of evidence that reporters had illegally accessed a state database looking for DUI records of a local coffee shop owner. @kedavis asked me for an update in a comment, but I decided to do a longer post instead.
The editor/owner of the newspaper, Eric Meyer, grew up in Marion, and his family has run the Record for decades. Before returning home to run the local paper, he had been editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and taught journalism at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, so he has national connections. Thus, the story went viral within hours.
Proximate Cause. A local restaurateur had been driving without a license for years due to DUI convictions, with the acquiescence of the local police department. She applied for a liquor license for her restaurant but was denied because of her DUIs. The newspaper investigated and learned (from her ex-husband) that the police had been letting her drive illegally. She was buddies with the new police chief, so she went to the chief and told him that the newspaper had illegally hacked into the state database to get her DUI records. The newspaper says that the database is public and that they didn’t hack anything. (Yes, it really is that petty.)
But this wasn’t just any police chief. He had been a captain on the Kansas City force where her was under investigation for sexual assault and intentionally driving over a dead body in his squad car. When he applied for the vacant Marion chief job, the newspaper discovered all this and reported it privately to the mayor; but he was hired anyway. So the police chief had a grudge against the newspaper.
Immediate Aftermath. When the story blew up, the Kansas Bureau of Investigation stepped in to investigate. They quickly returned the newspaper’s and the reporters’ property. The judge withdrew the search warrants. The editor’s 98-year-old mother and co-owner went into shock from her home being raided, and died the next day. There’s a sad but funny video of her standing with a walker in her bathrobe, yelling at the police searching her home. Among other things, she yelled at the police chief, “Does your mother love you?”
A lot more has been revealed of the local alliances involved in the raid. The new police chief and the mayor worked together to organize the raid. One city council member, Ruth Herbel, had allied with the paper as an advocate for good government, but the mayor and three other council members have long been opponents of the paper. About a year before the raid, the newspaper had exposed an effort by the council to illegally amend the city charter to allow the city to incur any amount of debt without a popular vote. The newspaper caught this and forced a municipal referendum on changing the charter, which was voted down. The mayor was publicly very angry about this.
Continuing Fallout. The police chief refused to resign at first, and the mayor refused to fire him. Eventually, with FOIA requests, the newspaper found texts between the chief and the mayor planning the raid, so the chief resigned under pressure.
The restaurateur had to close her coffee shop for lack of business, but her restaurant survived. However, she got a lot of local blowback, and it was great fun to read the comments and her responses on the restaurant Facebook page.
The local judge who issued the warrants has been under an ethics investigation, because in approving the warrants she stated that she had personally spoken to the police chief and that she had reviewed the evidence. She had done neither.
In January 2024, there were local elections. The mayor was stepping down because he was tired of the mess, but his hand-picked successor was elected. A Record reporter somehow got an invitation to the victory celebration of the old and new mayors at the country club. He was very publicly thrown out of the country club, but not without getting photos and video of the incident. Ruth Herbel, the newspaper’s only ally on the council, was defeated. So politically the city administration has closed ranks and survived.
The Marion County sheriff, who also participated in the raid, has drawn a serious opponent in the upcoming November elections. Usually local officials run unopposed until they decide to retire, at which point there is a contested election. But the opponent, who cleaned up the local police department of a town in the county, is running on a platform of cleaning up the sheriff’s department.
Lawsuits. Two reporters and the office manager have filed suits against the city, the judge, the police chief, and the county sheriff. Just a few days ago, the newspaper itself filed a $10 million federal lawsuit against the city. The city’s annual budget is only $8.7 million; although I’m sure the city has insurance, this would still be a huge blow against the city. The newspaper has argued that they are asking for such large damages because local officials everywhere need to be taught a lesson that they cannot do this.
Eric Meyer, owner and editor of the Record.
The Bigger Picture. The Marion County and Marion City governments are notoriously poorly run. (I’m not from here and don’t have local connections and don’t plan to live here long-term, so I can say this objectively.) Most of their decisions are based on alliances and conflicts that go back generations rather than any notion of good government. The paper has been an aggressive (probably too aggressive) advocate for good government. They routinely catch them in violations of Kansas law on local government. They have exposed a number of hires of people with a scandalous or even criminal background. Unlike most local newspaper editors, Eric Meyer has national experience; so he knows the law and investigative techniques. It’s important to have a strong advocate for good local government, something that most towns have lost as local newspapers have folded. But his style has made a of lot enemies, needlessly in my view.
The reaction of the general population surprised me. I’ve not heard one comment supportive of the newspaper – most people express embarrassment that Marion’s dirty laundry got aired on a national stage. But they still subscribe to the newspaper because every issue is filled with juicy stories. The raid and its fallout brought generations of conflict and fissures into focus.
Published in Journalism
As a minor character on Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In used to say, circa 56 years ago, “Verry interesting”. Thanks, Steve. We once used to read stories like this about places like Phenix City, Alabama in the Fifties, and think this was a phase of official lawlessness that’s long behind us.
It seems that we have this type of official lawlessness from the smallest town to the White House and DOJ.
Nice reference. I had to look up Phenix City to know what it was about.
Thanks for the update. You’d think the residents would appreciate being informed, but I guess they’re all a bunch of uungrateful snots.
They needed more aggressive reporting in Phoenix too, since the Phoenix Police Dept has been under investigation for at least a couple years now, due to using cops that have a history of deception etc that should have been “Brady Listed” but weren’t, and without notifying defense attorneys etc.
And there’s another place, not sure if it’s Florida or Georgia or what… you can find reports on it by searching YouTube for “Final Disrespects.”
There’s a sheriff – I think – somewhere in South Carolina who’s in trouble with SLED, the statewide agency there, for various misconduct. Stories about that on YouTube.
Plus there’s the town in Texas that got famous because it’s basically a wide spot in the road north of Dallas that had 50 cops for 250 residents, and most of them weren’t even in town. They were hired to work from home, even in Dallas, basically just serving as collection agents for speed traps etc. But they had to be “sworn officers” and the chief got them by hiring “troubled” people from other agencies. Lots about that on YouTube too.
And I’m sure there’s a lot more, but they don’t always make the news.
Small towns have their own issues. Not all Maybury.
The State out to revoke their charter.
Right there the case against the newspaper ends and everybody else needed to lawyer up.
@steve fast, can you elaborate on this (“probably too aggressive”)? It sounds to me like the newspaper finds itself in a treasure trove of the very sort of issues that responsible media would pursue.
I’d like that too.
It seems to me the Newspaper is 100% the Good Guys here, and the powers that be are just corrupt thugs with power, like a bad HOA
I never thought this was behind us, and it certainly isn’t mostly about small towns. A place like Chicago, Cook County, Illinois has this beat a thousand times over. Maybe even more. So does any large-ish town or city. I believe it’s only gotten worse as the muckrakers have been assimilated or eliminated.
This essay is a reminder that small town life is not always Andy Griffith’s Mayberry. The gains, prizes, and sides may seem small to an outsider, but that just makes the fights more vicious.
Artie Johnson
https://youtu.be/krD4hdGvGHM
(Video won’t embed…)
Until recently, our small town/valley (population about 3500) had a local paper and then there was another paper that covered the county at large. The Messenger (county paper) had a more aggressive publisher who sought to hold local government to account, except there really isn’t the level of issues as described in Marion. They would also focus a lot on the police blotter. By contrast, The Gazette (local paper) was run by my neighbor who had the opinion with respect to scandalous things to hold off because he felt, in essence, that pushing the negative/sensationalist items in a very connected area did more harm than good. He’d report the facts of local gov decisions, the high school sports stories, the obituaries, local interest stories etc and the highlight was always the last page which was the “Valley Views” which were pictures of people and happenings around town. The Gazette was rarely profitable and finally the Messenger bought them out (knowing they could low-ball the Gazette owner due to finances). Long story short, I guess that in a small area like Marion, there’s holding government to account and then there’s being a [redacted] in one’s approach to holding government to account.
They make officials look dumb and evil by the way they expose their mistakes and malfeasance, which is not undeserved in many cases. But in a small town the officials are related to people and have friends, and they become enemies. I think the paper would accomplish more by having an attitude of being an advocate for good government instead of an exposer of wrongdoing.
For example, they were merciless in exposing the change to the city charter about taking on unlimited debt. They assumed nefarious motives by the mayor and showed how the city council had tried to pass it secretly. If they had instead said that good government practices and the law require this to be voted on by the people and it was probably all just an innocent mistake, they would have gotten the same result of having it blocked in a referendum. But they would have angered fewer people.
It boggles my mind how exposing that should anger anyone. Now, I assume that they tried to get the other side of the story and didn’t charge into a narrative without trying to get all the perspectives.
A lot of it falls on the judge, really. Even if the police chief claimed it was some kind of “data breach” the judge should have found out and known better, rather than apparently just rubber-stamping warrants.
“Judicial immunity” cannot be absolute. And there are examples where judges find out that they can’t get away with just anything. Ask Ex-Judge Louise Goldston of West Virginia.
The judge in this case also seems to need to be made an example of.
The judge got off with an informal admonition by the Kansas judicial commission (i.e. her buddies). But in approving the warrants she swore that the police chief had personally appeared before her and that she had personally examined the affidavits. In fact, the police chief did not appear before her and only e-mailed her the affidavits three days after the raid. Ya know, just cleaning up pesky paperwork once the raid blew up.
Federal cases below. If you want to look up state cases you need to register:
https://prodportal.kscourts.org/prodportal
Reporter Zorn:
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/68227134/zorn-v-marion-kansas-city-of/
Office manager:
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/68390291/bentz-v-marion-kansas-city-of/
Executor and Publisher:
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/68396336/meyer-v-marion-kansas-city-of/
Funny how “making false statements” etc is a crime for everyone BUT the police, and judges…
But there are the occasional wins, and maybe they’ll become more frequent over time as people get fed up. I just saw a case the other day where a judge put a sheriff in jail for 60 days – could have been 180, and maybe should have been – for violating a court order.
The next step would be, who will put the judges in jail for violating the laws and/or the Constitution?
It is too bad that we don’t have a nationally known newspaper with this kind of integrity and interest in keeping the politicians honest. It is really nice to hear that somewhere there is still that kind of journalism still practiced.
And at the end of the lawsuits, hopefully the newspaper/editor/owner will own that town, or a lot of it. Maybe the people will learn not to elect/hire corrupt officials.
When journalists actually do speak truth to power and serve the public’s right to know, the democratic process and the rule of law is supposed to kick in. But if voters and judges are not themselves truth-loving, moral people, then exposure just results in cynicism, resignation, and a likely beatdown and eventual silencing of dissidents (See, e.g., Venezuela, NYC, Harvard,…)
The whole State of Georgia is run this way. Fani Willis is the poster person, but very representative of the State as a whole.
Thanks for digging up the links to the court cases. I read the newspaper’s complaint, and it was devastating and hilarious.