Law enforcement officers in Kansas raided the office of a local newspaper and a journalist’s home on Friday, prompting outrage over what First Amendment experts are calling a likely violation of federal law.

The police department in Marion, Kansas — a town of about 2,000 — raided the Marion County Record under a search warrant signed by a county judge. Officers confiscated computers, cellphones, reporting materials and other items essential to the weekly paper’s operations.

  • Captain Howdy@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    34
    ·
    1 year ago

    This is probably one of the most important (legally and politically speaking) events to happen in the U.S. this year, but I feel like it will not get very much attention at all and might set a very dangerous precedent going into the next decade.

  • Curious Canid@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    26
    ·
    1 year ago

    Stories about police abusing their authority and breaking the law have become like stories about mass shootings. They happen constantly, everyone wrings their hands, but no one is willing to actually do anything about the problem.

    • RGB3x3@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      1 year ago

      It’s what the poorly titled “Defund the Police” movement was/is about. The police serve no other purpose than to harass people and enforce the will of rich and politicians. So they need to be vastly scaled back.

  • StarServal@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    22
    ·
    1 year ago

    Local authorities said they were investigating the newsroom for “identity theft,” according to the warrant. The raid was linked to alleged violations of a local restaurant owner’s privacy, when journalists obtained information about her driving record.

    Oberlander said exceptions to the Privacy Protection Act are “important but very limited.” One such exception allows authorities to raid a newsroom if the journalists themselves are suspected to be involved in the crime at hand. In a statement sent to NPR, Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody cited this exception to justify his department’s raid of the Marion County Record.

    However

    Several media law experts told NPR the raid appears to be a violation of federal law, which protects journalists from this type of action.

    • Pandantic [they/them]@midwest.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      27
      ·
      1 year ago

      Meyer, the Marion County Record’s publisher, said local restaurateur Kari Newell accused the paper of illegally obtaining drunk-driving records about her.

      But the paper, Meyer said, received this information about Newell from a separate source, independently verified it on the Kansas Department of Revenue’s Division of Vehicles website — and decided not to publish it. The paper instead opted to notify local police.

      Here’s their justification - they found out about a business owner’s drunk driving records, and told the police. The police decided this was “identity theft”.

    • IntrovertedEO@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      A bit of cherry picking there

      But Oberlander said that exception doesn’t apply when the alleged crime is connected to newsgathering — which appears to be the case in Marion.

  • SCB@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    21
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    While this is otherwise pretty great reporting, I found this sentence incredibly weird

    Without the devices, she was left unable to stream shows onto her TV or use devices if she needed help, the newspaper said.

    One of those things is significantly more important than the other, since she died shortly after this raid. Just a weird sentence overall.

  • malloc@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    16
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    In America, there’s big city police. Then there is rural county police. The latter have the potential to get away with so much blatant violation of local/state/federal law. Checks and balances of power is nonexistent.

    Doesn’t help that journalists and local newspapers have either vacated the region or bought by some VC/PE or larger media organization which guts the IJ division

    • SpezBroughtMeHere@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      arrow-down
      21
      ·
      1 year ago

      Yeah there’s no corruption with big city police, is there? Internal investigations always come up with accurate conclusions and big city police are always held accountable for their actions.

      • Ageroth@reddthat.com
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        20
        ·
        1 year ago

        Why can’t rural police be as corrupt or more, with even less oversight? How does that make city police not corrupt? What is the internal investigation process for rural cops, especially at the county sherrif level?

      • dogslayeggs@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        10
        ·
        1 year ago

        Reading comprehension isn’t your strong suit, is it? At no point did they say big city police weren’t corrupt. They just said that small town cops have the potential to be so much more corrupt.

  • SnowdenHeroOfOurTime@unilem.org
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    9
    arrow-down
    29
    ·
    1 year ago

    In China, NPR would suffer a few arrests and jailings just for posting this article, but a lot of uneducated weirdos out there still think “ThE uS iS wOrSe”