The Raid

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0:36Or are you stuck in one you've outgrown? Or never wanted in the first place? Sure, you can probably list the reasons for staying, but are they actually just excuses for not leaving? Let a career coach from strawberry.me help you get unstuck. Discover the benefits of having a dedicated career coach in your corner. Go to strawberry.me slash unstuck to claim a special offer. On August 11, 2023, police arrived at the home of a man named Eric Meyer in Marion, Kansas. I was just sitting there at the house, checking email, doing normal stuff, and they came to the door. What did they say they wanted? They said they were serving a warrant.

1:23Eric Meyer is the editor and publisher of a local newspaper, the Marion County Record. Marion is a small town, about an hour north of Wichita. And at the time, the paper had about 4 ,000 subscribers. Eric took over as editor of the newspaper in 2021 after working as a reporter and editor and as a journalism professor for decades. This is purely a retirement gig. When the police came to his door, Eric asked to look at their warrant. The warrant said they were searching for evidence of identity theft and, quote, unlawful acts concerning computers. At the same time, police were also searching the newspaper's office blocks away.

2:12They searched the house in the newspaper office for several hours. At least seven officers were involved in the raid, including the chief of police, a man named Gideon Cody. They eventually started taking things as evidence, Eric Meyer's laptop, a hard drive, His mother's computer, her router. Down at the office, they took the reporter's cell phones, her personal cell phones, and all the computers that we used to in the news operation, along with our file server, along with our backup drives. They'd been bragging around to other officers that this was going to be the biggest raid in the history of Marion County.

2:54They brought every officer they'd had. They even brought extra on. They brought a state fire marshal to come in as extra help to do the raiding. Had you ever heard of the police raiding a newspaper office before? No, no. It's unheard of. No one ever expected anything like this to ever happen. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.

3:28Eric Meyer and his parents bought the Marion County Record in 1998 to keep it from being sold to a newspaper chain. His father had worked at the paper since 1948 as an editor, and his mother was a columnist and editor. Eric started working at the paper when he was a kid. I started doing menial things like stapling. We had a job printing operation, and I would staple and trim things. And then I was about sixth or seventh grade, I started developing all the pictures and making all the, in those days, we had to make engravings of pictures. I did that all through high school. I became the vacation relief for my parents.

4:11And actually, my grandmother, who had retired from the Wichita Eagle, was also working there. So I guess this is a family retirement thing. And what does the paper typically cover? Everything local. If it happens in Marion County, we cover it. So anything that happens from, you know, cars hitting deer, chicken dinner type stuff, the honor roll at the schools, everything that happens in local government. That includes reporting on local police. We've tried to be aggressive at this. There was a time when this was sort of, oh, boosterism, cheerleading for the community. But we've tried to do a different approach and really bring serious journalism to the newspaper.

5:05When Gideon Cody was sworn in as the new police chief of Marion, the record covered it, writing that he would make$60 ,000 a year as police chief and that he was one of three candidates who'd interviewed for the position. Before that, he'd been working as a police captain in Kansas City. Soon as he was appointed was we started hearing from people he'd worked with. We had numerous sources, more than a dozen sources, telling us that he was in trouble in Kansas City. He was about to be demoted. Their sources said that he was under internal review by the police department for allegedly making insulting and sexist comments to a female officer.

5:48Reporter Deb Gruver at the Marion County Record started working on a story about Gideon Cody's past. Did he know that you were looking into, that the record was looking into his backstory? Oh, yes. He knew and threatened to sue us if we ran it. I regret now that we didn't. We didn't have a document. we didn't have a name source. We had multiple sources, and some people would say that's enough to go on, but we were wanting to get something that was on the record, and he had been threatening us with a defamation suit if we ran it. A few months later, on August 1, 2023, a local congressman held an open forum at a coffee shop in Marion.

6:36Police Chief Gideon Cody was there, So was Eric Meyer and another reporter from the Marion County Record. The coffee shop was owned by a woman named Carrie Newell. She ordered Gideon Cody to come over and throw us out, saying she didn't want us there. She reserved the right to refuse service to anyone. Why didn't she want you there? She didn't like the media, she said. She later said it was just us, not the media. But at the time, she said no media allowed. We were the only media that were there and had us thrown out. Carrie Newell later said that the Marion County record has, quote, a longstanding reputation for twisting and contorting comments within our community.

7:24A court document later said that Carrie Newell said that people were, quote, high-fiving her for making the reporters leave. After the forum, the Marion County Police Department posted about the event on Facebook, writing, Thank you, Carrie Newell, for the invite. The next day, Eric Meyer and Marion County record reporter Phyllis Zorn wrote about what happened in an article with the headline, Media Ejected at Open Forum. That day, they got a Facebook message. We received this tip that said that, you know, that Carrie Newell has been driving illegally for almost 20 years. Reporter Phyllis Zorn had received a screenshot of a letter from the Kansas Department of Revenue.

8:14It outlined all of the steps Carrie Newell would need to follow to get her license reinstated. She lost it after a 2008 drunk driving conviction. The person who sent the tip also said police were aware that Carrie Newell did not have a valid driver's license and was driving anyway. Eric and Phyllis wanted to figure out whether the document was real. So we called the state. Phyllis Zorn called the Kansas Department of Revenue, also known as the KDOR, and asked if she could find the document on their site. The person on the phone told her how to do it. So we got it and we verified that it was, in fact, a legitimate document.

8:57And then we decided whether we were going to use it or not. The Facebook tip had come from someone who was friends with Carrie Newell's soon-to-be ex-husband. We decided we didn't want to get in the middle of a divorce. But we were a little concerned if the police were aware of this and not enforcing the law. So I wrote a letter to the police chief and to the sheriff saying, we got this document, we verified it's true, we don't plan to use it in any way, shape, or form, but you should be aware that there's an allegation that officers are ignoring this and allowing her to drive. The vice mayor of Marion was also sent the same document on Facebook.

9:37She forwarded it along to the city administrator because Carrie Newell was applying for a liquor license. The city administrator said in response to that, We're not going to investigate this at all. It's up to the state to worry about liquor licenses. The city police department's going to do nothing with this story. That was Friday. Somewhere Monday morning following that, someone changed their mind. On Monday, Police Chief Gideon Cody sent Carrie Newell a text message. Said, this is Chief Cody. I need you to contact me back as soon as possible. We believe you've been the victim of a crime. Carrie Newell, speaking with a Kansas City TV reporter.

10:19And he said, they went to the KDOR site, and they accessed your case files and had downloaded that information. I said, who is they? And he said, Phyllis Thorne. That night, Carrie Newell went to a city council meeting. Eric Meyer was there, too. and Carrie Newell formally accused the newspaper of stealing her information by illegally accessing the state's website. She said that not only had they stolen her information, but they'd shared it with the city's vice mayor, Ruth Herbel. It was brought to my attention today that my private and personal information that was illegally obtained by a local reporter was shared with council member Ruth Herbel.

11:10Ruth then took it upon herself to share that information with others. And I'm very disappointed that as a representative of our community, in your elected position, that you would behave so negligently and maliciously. And I really hope that your team members here today take note of exactly how vital your behavior is. Eric Meyer asked to speak next. And I got up afterward and said, no, that is not what happened. I will tell you that it was material that was provided to us, and we chose not to disseminate it any further. Four days later is when police knocked on his door with their warrant to search his house and the newspaper office.

11:54In the warrant, Gideon Cody had written that downloading the document from the state's website involved either impersonating Kerry Newell or lying about the reasons why the record was being sought. I informed them that I thought this was a set-up deal, that the police chief was aware we had information on him, and he had animus toward us. Your mother was also at the house when the police arrived. How did she react? She actually was in her bedroom when they arrived. She came out of her bedroom. She was very upset that they were there, and became increasingly upset. In home security footage, Eric's mother, Joanne Meyer, is wearing a house coat, holding on to a walker.

12:42She's 98. Don't you touch any of that stuff. Ma 'am. This is my house. There are six police officers in her living room. One is holding a flashlight, looking at a desk. What are you doing over there going through the panels? How many computers do you have in the house, ma 'am? I'm not going to tell you. Get out of my way. I want to see what they're doing. Well, they're working. I don't care what they're doing. You can go on through if you want. What are you doing? Those are personal papers. They were just standing there guarding her so that she couldn't touch anything. They were there for two and a half hours.

13:21I may be 90-some years old, but I know what's going on. And what's going on is illegal as hell. she started comparing what they were doing to Nazi tactics. And she's not one who would use the word Nazi casually, but she wanted to know why they were allowed to do this, why there were police in her house. Eventually, by the end of the day, there were seven officers in her house. Weeks earlier, they had had a case where they were searching for evidence in a rape case, a child rape case. They went into a guy's house who was the suspect of this, known to have firearms in his house. They took two people.

14:05Why they needed seven to go after a 98-year-old woman to try to get her computer, I do not understand. Other than the fact it was designed to embarrass and harass and put us in our place. At the newspaper's offices, police told reporters they needed to wait outside while they conducted their search. Reporter Deb Gruver later said when the police initially came in, she thought there might have been a bomb threat. When she realized what was happening, she tried to call Eric Meyer. She said that Gideon Cody told her she couldn't call anyone and that he grabbed her phone out of her hand. Deb Groover was not involved in the reporting on Carrie Newell and said so to Gideon Cody.

14:54But she had been the reporter asking questions about his past. When they were searching the newsroom, they got to her desk, and an officer was going through her desk, Deb Groover's desk, and found the investigative files we had on Gideon Cody and calls out to Gideon Cody, You should come look at this. And shows Gideon Cody the file we had, the first page of which was the LinkedIn profile of our main source, so he knew who it was. He looked at it and put it back in the desk drawer. On body camera footage, you can hear Gideon Cody saying, keep a personal file on me. I don't care. The sheriff's office threw a pizza party for the officers after the raid.

15:40Gideon Cody left his body camera running during the party, and can be heard telling the Marion County Sheriff that taking the phone out of Deb Gruver's hand, quote, made my day. The police had also raided a third location, Vice Mayor Ruth Herbel's home, where they seized her laptop and cell phone. You can hear her reacting in body camera footage. This doesn't put a very good light on the police department. After the raid, Eric Myers says his mother, Joanne Meyer wasn't doing well. She just sat in a chair and kept talking over and over again, where were all the good people? I've lived in this town for 98 years.

16:28I've spent 60 years working on the newspaper. What was it all for? The next day, Joanne Meyer had a heart attack and died. She'd been working for the paper for almost 60 years, writing her column up until her death. Were you able to publish a paper that week after the raid? Yeah. Oh, there was absolutely no way we were not going to publish a newspaper that week. That would have been defeat.

17:02We'll be right back.

17:34Thank you.

17:40Every story you love, every invention that moves you, every idea you wished was yours, all began as nothing. Just a blank page with a blinking cursor. Asking a simple question. What do you see? Great ideas start on Mac. Find out more on apple.com slash Mac. When you first heard about the raid on the Marin County record, what did you think? Here we go again. Felicity Berenger is a journalist. She's worked for newspapers like the Washington Post and the New York Times. And I was the editor of the Stanford Daily in 1971 when the Palo Alto police searched our offices. The Stanford Daily is the student-run newspaper at Stanford University.

18:39In the spring of 1971, the paper was covering two protests, one after a Mexican-American professor was denied tenure, and one after a black janitor had been fired. Those protests coalesced into a major demonstration that took over an adjunct building at the medical school. The Stanford Daily's photographer was there and took photos of a clash between police and protesters. He took photos as police entered the building. And the protesters burst out, swinging clubs, beat the officers, and escaped out the other side. Thirteen police officers were injured. At the time, the staff of the Stanford Daily had a policy about its photographs and how they could be used.

19:30They'd print any photo that was newsworthy. But they said, We will not store photos so that either prosecutors or defense attorneys could use our material in court. A few days after the protest, on April 12, 1971, Felicity Barringer had just left an English class and was about to walk into the newspaper office. And I was met at the glass doors by one of the top editors. The first thing he said was, I couldn't do anything. They had a search warrant. The Palo Alto police were inside their offices. A judge had issued the warrant because he believed the newspaper had photos that would show who would hurt the police officers.

20:14When I moved into the office, I could see people in the uniforms of Palo Alto police officers, although there was at least one plainclothes officer. going through the office, looking at desks and going particularly to our darkroom and looking at all of our photographs and negatives. It was an odd, I would say it was a terrible feeling, but it was just an odd feeling. It's a feeling of violation. This is our space. This is our material. These are our notes. You're going through drawers. I've never been burglarized, but I imagine the sense of violation is analogous. This is our stuff that we do our work with.

20:59What are you doing here? And what gives you the right to do it? Walter Cronkite said about the raid, this sounds like some remote totalitarian state. Later, the Palo Alto police said they'd gotten a search warrant rather than a subpoena because they worried that the newspaper staff would destroy photos if they knew the police wanted them. In the end, the police raiding the Stanford Daily didn't find any incriminating photos of protesters at all. The staff of the newspaper reached out to a Stanford law professor for help. We were just thinking, the courts are a way to make this kind of behavior illegal.

21:44And so we thought that was our obligation, was to make sure it didn't happen again. The paper filed a lawsuit against the Palo Alto police chief, James Zurcher. They argued that by entering their offices with a search warrant, their First Amendment rights to free speech and free press, and their Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure were being violated. And I followed it closely and was particularly happy with the initial district court decision, which agreed with us on our First and Fourth Amendment claims, and the Court of Appeals decision that essentially said this should not be done.

22:27Freedom of the press is too important. The Supreme Court reviewed the case in 1978. James Zurcher, the police chief, gave an interview to the Stanford Daily and said that if the Supreme Court reversed the lower court's decision and decided in favor of the police, quote, I would certainly give a lot of thought to any third-party searches in the future. In the end, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Palo Alto police, deciding that using a warrant to search the newspaper was constitutional. It was extremely disappointing. The Boston Globe called the decision, quote, a first step toward a police state.

23:11There was so much outcry that then-President Jimmy Carter encouraged Congress to take up the issue. In 1980, Congress passed the Privacy Protection Act, which barred law enforcement from using warrants to search newsrooms in almost all situations. If you want information from a newspaper, you send a subpoena, and the subpoena can be challenged in court. If newspapers can be searched by law enforcement, trust is completely undermined. Trust between the newspaper and its sources. Trust between the newspaper and its readers. The newspaper becomes, in some ways, even if involuntarily, an agent of government.

24:00And that is something that can never happen if a newspaper is going to have the integrity and the ability to provide information that the citizenry needs. Since the Privacy Protection Act passed in 1980, newsroom raids have been rare. Until the raid on the Marion County Record. We'll be right back.

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26:50It took two all-nighters. We didn't even have our nameplate, you know, the thing on the front of the paper that says Marion County Record. We didn't even have that. We had to recreate everything. We pulled computers out of an old storage closet. and it's a fancy name for junk room. And we had old Windows XP computers that we set up in a temporary network. The one thing we still had was that we'd posted a PDF as we always do on the website of our paper, but it was a low res PDF. So we pulled it down and tried to grab some material from it. Our normal deadline is midnight on Tuesday night. We were there until 6.30 before we got the paper sent out to our printer at 6.30 a.m., but we made it.

27:44And what was the headline? Seized, but not silenced. The day after the raid, the Marion Police Department wrote a Facebook post defending their search, acknowledging the Federal Privacy Protection Act, but suggesting it doesn't give special protection. quote, when there is reason to believe the journalist is taking part in the underlying wrongdoing. The newspaper's lawyer, Bernie Rhodes, responded in a letter to Police Chief Gideon Cody, your characterization of the law is wrong. Here he is speaking with KCUR, a public radio station in Kansas City. The only justification they've given is what's on their Facebook page, which is that they were looking at a criminal suspect.

28:31But again, you're a criminal suspect only if reporting is a crime. And in this country, it's not. In videos at the time, you said, you know, this will make national news. And the police didn't seem to believe you. Oh, no, they laughed at it. And later on in body cams, they're joking about, oh, yeah, sure, he thinks it's going to make national news. Well, it made international news. On the Wednesday after the search, the Marion County attorney said that he was withdrawing the search warrant that had been used for the raid. He said that there was, quote, insufficient evidence for it. A judge ordered that the items the police had taken be returned.