Heavy handed Gestapo raid tactics left the 98-year-old co-owner of a Kansas newspaper dead. Her son, who runs the paper, has lawyers crawling out of the woodwork to represent him in his civil rights abuse case. He’s demanding to know what happened to the civilized way of doing business, with things like requests and subpoenas.
Police raid ‘unprecedented’
News outlets everywhere are screaming about the way the co-owner of a Kansas newspaper died, as a direct result of an “unprecedented police raid” against her publication.”
“The staff and owners were rousted by Gestapo after they “obtained damaging information about a local businesswoman.” They didn’t even publish it.
Police in Marion, Kansas, didn’t intentionally murder 98-year-old Joan Meyer but they killed her and the raid which caused it wasn’t necessary. It wasn’t even legal. Ms. Meyer passed away after being “stressed beyond her limits and overwhelmed by hours of shock and grief” after cops raided the home she shares with her son on Friday, August 11.
Just before she died, Joan Meyer, a newspaperwoman since 1953, said this about a police raid on her Kansas home: “These are Hitler tactics and something has to be done.” https://t.co/k3QQTiQGYI
— David Beard (@dabeard) August 13, 2023
“She had not been able to eat after police showed up at the door of her home Friday with a search warrant in hand,” her paper, the Marion Record, wrote. “Neither was she able to sleep Friday night.”
When Marion Police showed up at her door with a swat team, Ms. Meyer was “at the home waiting for a delivery from Meals on Wheels.” Instead, “she tearfully watched during the raid as police not only carted away her computer but also dug through her son Eric’s personal bank and investments statements to photograph them.” Her 69-year-old son, Eric Meyer, “vowed legal retribution against the City of Marion and those involved with the search, noting that legal experts contacted by the paper agreed that the city had violated federal laws and his team’s Constitutional rights.”
According to John Galer, the chairperson of the National Newspaper Association, “Newsroom raids in this country receded into history. Gathering information from newsrooms is a last resort and then done only with subpoenas that protect the rights of all involved. For a newspaper to be intimidated by an unannounced search and seizure is unthinkable.”
The Gestapo tactics
Eric wasn’t about to let this tragedy silence his paper’s message. “Our first priority is to be able to publish next week,” Meyer relates following the raid. At the same time, “we also want to make sure no other news organization is ever exposed to the Gestapo tactics we witnessed today.”
It’s no coincidence she died the next day. Simply banging on the door of the family home wasn’t what killed Ms. Meyer. She watched helplessly as one of their female reporters “was injured when an officer grabbed her cell phone out of her hand,” for instance.
The free-speech chilling and illegal raid was “carried out by the city’s entire five-officer force and two sheriff’s deputies.” All because a local restaurant owner, Kari Newell, wasn’t happy to see her name in the news. The paper “was allegedly in possession of leaked documents that could have gotten Newell’s liquor license revoked, including evidence that the restaurateur had been convicted of drunk driving and continued to operate a vehicle without a license.”
People have been stopping by to drop off flowers to newsroom. Now there’s a beautiful display with Joan Meyer’s picture. @KSHB41 pic.twitter.com/c4tU8FtQRh
— Jessica McMaster (@JessMcMasterKC) August 14, 2023
The only problem with the city’s story is the fact the “paper, however, chose not to report on the story and notified police of the situation, believing the documents were released by someone close to Newell’s ex-husband.”
Contrary to Newell’s claims at a city council meeting, they never “disseminated the sensitive documents,” because they knew they came from a dubious source, unsolicited. They did publish a story with related subject matter but based entirely on publicly available records. Totally legal. When cops showed up to raid the family home, they had a search warrant two pages long listing everything under the sun.
Police were told to haul away “computer software and hardware, digital communications, cellular networks, servers, and hard drives, items with passwords, utility records, and all documents and records pertaining to Newell.” It specifically “targeted ownership of computers capable of being used to ‘participate in the identity theft of Kari Newell.‘” That worried the old lady to death.
