Now the newspaper plans to sue the police department for the abuse committed.
Photo: Sean Gardner/AFP/Getty Images
A small central Kansas police department faces a whirlwind of criticism after raiding the offices of Record, a local newspaper and the house of its publisher and owner, in addition to other collaborators, a measure that various press freedom control organizations consider a flagrant violation of the country’s laws.
In addition, it was announced that the co-owner of the medium, Joan Meyer, 98, died after the situation left her ‘stressed beyond her limits’According to his own family.
According to the narrative, Meyer collapsed Saturday afternoon and died at his home a day after tearfully watching officers show up at his home with a search warrant and take his computer.
According to the Marion County Record he said in his own published reports that Police raided the newspaper’s office on Friday, seizing the newspaper’s computers, phones and file server, and the staff’s personal cell phones.al, based on a search warrant.
Police simultaneously raided the home of Eric Meyer, the newspaper’s editor and co-owner, seizing computers, his cellphone and the home’s Internet router, Meyer said. Meyer’s 98-year-old mother, Record co-owner Joan Meyer, who lives in the home with her son, collapsed and died Saturday, Meyer said, attributing her death to the stress of the raid on her home. .
According to the medium itself, The source of the problem was when a confidential source allegedly leaked evidence that a local restaurant owner, Kari Newell, had been convicted of drunk driving.but continued to use his car without a license.
However, it transpired that the newspaper never published anything related to the information because its staff reportedly suspected that the source was passing on information from Newell’s husband during their divorce.
However, after police notified Newell that the information was circulating, she alleged at a local city council meeting that the newspaper had illegally obtained and disseminated confidential documents.
Later, at a city council meeting, Newell publicly accused the newspaper of using illegal means to obtain information about a drunk driving conviction against him. The newspaper responded that it received that unsolicited information, which it tried to verify through online public records.. Eventually he decided not to run a story about Newell’s DUI, but he did run a story about the city council meeting where Newell upheld the 2008 DUI conviction.
Consequently, a two-page search warrant, signed by a local judge, was issued, listing Newell as a victim of alleged crimes committed by the newspaper.
Now, Meyer said the newspaper plans to sue the police department and possibly others.calling the raid an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of the press.
Press freedom and civil rights organizations agreed that the police, the local prosecutor’s office and the judge who signed the search warrant exceeded their authority.
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