The owner of a small Kansas weekly newspaper claims his 98-year-old mother died from stress stemming from a police raid of her home using what she called “Hitler tactics.” Those words were reportedly among her last.
“Stressed beyond her limits and overwhelmed by hours of shock and grief after illegal police raids on her home and the Marion County Record newspaper office Friday, 98-year-old newspaper co-owner Joan Meyer, otherwise in good health for her age, collapsed Saturday afternoon and died at her home,” the Record reported.
Meyer co-owned the Marion County Record with her son Eric before her death Sunday. The weekly publication has reported on news in Marion County, Kansas, since 1869 and has about 4,000 subscribers.
The raid of the nonagenarian’s home coincided with a raid of the publication’s office by local police, who seized files, computers and cellphones from the offices and staff, the Record reported afterward.
Raids on Meyer’s home and the Record’s newsroom followed a complaint from local businesswoman Kari Newell who alleged reporters illegally obtained documents showing her license was suspended for a prior DUI.
Magistrate Laura Viar approved a warrant request from the small town’s chief of police, Gideon Cody, to raid the newspaper’s office and seize files and computers.
According to a report from the Record, the court clerk’s office issued written notice that no probable cause affidavit was included with Chief Cody’s arrest warrant request.
“This is the type of stuff that, you know, Vladimir Putin does, that Third World dictators do,” Eric Meyer, 69, editor and publisher of the newspaper, told The Associated Press. “This is Gestapo tactics from World War II.”
The New York Post characterized the actions of Cody and his officers as a “Gestapo-style” raid on a small town newspaper. The tabloid revealed the chief may have been enacting a little revenge against the paper.
The Marion County Record was investigating Cody, 54, after receiving an “outpouring of calls” alleging he left his last police job to avoid demotion after facing allegations of sexual misconduct.
Cody retired from the Kansas City, Missouri, police force as a captain after 24 years of service, the Post reported, before joining Marion County’s PD.
Co-publisher Eric Meyer said the Record was contacted by Cody’s former colleagues, who revealed the claims of sexual misconduct, according to a report published on The Handbasket, which is on Substack.
Some Marion residents and business owners have supported Cody’s raid of the newspaper, which the police chief claims was conducted legally.
Jared Smith, a lifelong Marion resident, said Monday he supports the police raid.
Smith accused the newspaper of ruining his wife’s year-old day spa business by reporting she had appeared nude in a magazine years before, an Associated Press report noted.
“The only crime we committed is being a reporter,” Record attorney Bernie Rhodes told Fox News. “We received information from a source, and like any good reporter we went to verify that information.”
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