Chief

Update: Kansas Police Chief in Mom Killing Raid Was Their Next Story

The “Gestapo-style” raid was really meant to cover up sexual misconduct allegations against Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody. This is a major update to what began seriously enough as the illegal and unconstitutional “raid” on a newspaper publishing family. The heavy handed action directly resulted in the death of 98-year-old Joan Meyer, Co-Owner of The Marion Record. Cody only ordered the raid because he was also a target of the paper.

Police Chief accused of misconduct

Police Chief Gideon Cody “and every officer in the Marion Police Department stormed into the Marion County Record’s offices Friday with a search warrant where they seized computers and servers,” New York Post reports. That’s only part of the story.

They also raided the home of the editor and publisher, Eric Meyer, and his 98-year-old mother Joan Meyer, the paper’s co-owner.” She answered the door expecting her Meals on Wheels and a SWAT team was on her porch demanding her computer. She died the following day of “shock and grief.

Police pushed the old lady out of the way and barged in, seizing “her computer and smart speaker, as well as her son’s cellphone and even his router.” The search warrant convinced the local judge that Chief Cody needed all that equipment for an “identity theft” case, involving a local restaurant owner.

The owner, Kari Newell, was having trouble renewing a liquor license and the Record allegedly had information about her and a prior DUI, which would have been embarrassing if published. The first hole in the story is that the paper didn’t publish it. Instead, they reported to the cops that it was probably the woman’s husband who sent it to them, unsolicited. The paper asked for the husband to be investigated for that.

Instead, Chief Cody used it as an excuse to seize their files, which had real evidence which the paper was getting ready to use against him. He never expected the elderly woman’s death to ignite a firestorm of controversy, with Constitutional legal experts suddenly being airlifted in for support. Every news outlet in the nation is screaming about the “Gestapo” tactics.

It turns out that “Newell also threw The Marion County Record’s reporters out of a public meeting held by a local congressman — which was attended by the police chief — and used a city council meeting to accuse the paper of illegally obtaining her DUI records, while admitting that she had a drunken driving record.” That admission made a story unnecessary.

Sources not ‘anonymous’ now

The latest development is that what Eric Meyer did have in his files are the identities of “more than six anonymous sources” who “reached out to the newspaper alleging Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody retired from the Kansas City Police Department to avoid demotion over sexual misconduct charges.” Thanks to the raid, Cody knows who ratted him out.

Apparently, Cody “previously worked for 24 years at the Kansas City Police Department in Missouri, where sources claimed he had been accused of sexual misconduct.” Those allegations hadn’t been verified but things look even worse for Cody now.

Not much exciting ever happens in the rural community of Marion County, Kansas. The Marion County Record, published weekly, started printing in 1869. This is the first time it’s ever “been at the center of a national battle over freedom of the press.” First Amendment advocates are jumping up and down, howling hysterically over the abuse. Now they’re really hopping.

The illegal raid was meant to cover up an investigation that the chief “had retired from his last police post to avoid demotion over sexual misconduct allegations.” He’s only been with the department since late April.

As Eric Meyer relates following the raid, the paper had been contacted by Chief Cody’s “former colleagues about the claims of sexual misconduct, but that the six-plus anonymous sources ultimately never went on the record and reporters couldn’t obtain Cody’s personnel file.

Cody knows who they are now. “The explosive claims – as well as the identities of who made them – were contained on one of the computers seized during the raids at the newspaper’s office.

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