Police stage 'chilling' raid on Marion County newspaper, seizing computers, records and cellphones - Kansas Reflector
kansasreflector.com
In an unprecedented raid Friday, local law enforcement seized computers, cellphones and reporting materials from the Marion County Record office, the newspaper's reporters, and the publisher's home.
  • @Toribor@corndog.socialEnglish
    89•1 year ago

    This is my hometown and unfortunately this is just the most recent escalation. Mayor Mayfield and most conservatives in the area have it out for the Record and have been causing all sorts of chaos at City Council meetings.

    This isn’t the only scandal the Record was investigating either. The director of the hospital quit amidst a brewing scandal from over billing the local pharmacy while trying to open a competing pharmacy through family. Of course it’s all mixed up with local politics. People don’t like journalists asking difficult questions and don’t think the rules apply to them.

  • @ikapoz@sh.itjust.works
    43•1 year ago

    Some petty ass old boys network tries to strong arm local journalist nerd over some Facebook wall drama about a DUI, fails to consider the size his microphone.

    • athos77
      44•1 year ago

      Except it might not be about the DUI. I had been thinking that the restaurant owner approached the cops to harass the newspaper because of the DUI. But now I’m thinking that maybe the cops approached the restaurant owner to get information so they could swear out an illegal warrant for their own ends.

      The following is courtesy of @roguetrick in one of the other threads:

      This is the important bit: https://thehandbasket.substack.com/p/a-conversation-with-the-newspaper

      EM: So the backstory that we haven’t told, because we don’t wanna get in trouble, is that we’ve been investigating the police chief [Gideon Cody]. When he was named Chief just two months ago, we got an outpouring of calls from his former co-workers making a wide array of allegations against him saying that he was about to be demoted at his previous job and that he retired to avoid demotion and punishment over sexual misconduct charges and other things.

      We had half a dozen or more different anonymous sources calling in about that. Well, we never ran that because we never could get any of them to go on the record, and we never could get his personnel file. But the allegations—including the identities of who made the allegations—were on one of the computers that got seized. I may be paranoid that this has anything to do with it, but when people come and seize your computer, you tend to be a little paranoid.

    • @yacht_boy@lemmy.world
      19•1 year ago

      That take is only accurate in a country where this kind of thing is an anomaly. If this is allowed to stand, then it will become normal. I don’t want to live in a country without a free and independent press.

    • @vd1n@lemmy.ml
      -4•1 year ago

      The Masons. Masons are either criminals or lonely guys sucked into a group of people taking advantage of them.