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Aug. 5, 2024Topeka, Kan. |  By: AP

Prosecutors plan to charge former Kansas police chief over his conduct following newspaper raid

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TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Two special prosecutors said Monday that they plan to charge a former central Kansas police chief with obstruction of justice over his conduct following a police raid last year on the local weekly newspaper.

Prosecutors Marc Bennett and Barry Wilkerson concluded in their 124-page report that the staff at the Marion County Record committed no crimes before former Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody led a raid on its offices and the home of its publisher. They said police warrants signed by a judge to allow the searches contained inaccurate information from an “inadequate investigation” and that the searches were not legally justified.

Police body camera footage of the 2023 raid on Publisher Eric Meyer’s home shows his 98-year-old mother, Joan Meyer, visibly upset and telling officers, “Get out of my house!” She co-owned the paper, lived with her son and died of a heart attack the next afternoon.

Prosecutors found no evidence officers “believed they were posing a risk to Mrs. Meyer’s life,” but they allege Cody obstructed an official judicial process in the weeks after the raid. He resigned as chief last October. It wasn’t clear whether officials planned to charge him with a felony or a misdemeanor, and either is possible. The criminal complaint had not been filed as of Monday.

“Small town familiarity explains but does not excuse the inadequate investigation that gave rise to the search warrant applications in this matter,” prosecutors said in their report.

Bennett is the district attorney in Sedgwick County, home to the state’s largest city of Wichita; and Wilkerson is the chief prosecutor in Riley County in northeastern Kansas. The state’s attorney general appointed them after the Marion County prosecutor — who faced questions himself about the search warrants — said he had conflict.

The raid sparked a national debate about press freedom focused on Marion, a town of about of about 1,900 people set among rolling prairie hills about 150 miles (241 kilometers) southwest of Kansas City, Missouri.

Seth Stern, director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, said in a statement that Cody should face other charges in addition to obstruction of justice.

“The raid itself was criminal,” he said. “And Cody is far from the only one at fault here.”

Meyer said in an interview that he’s grateful prosecutors found that the newspaper’s staff committed no crimes, though he questioned why it took them a full year. He also expressed frustration that Cody is the only official expected to face criminal prosecution.

“What I feel is going on here is that he’s been set up as the fall guy,” Meyer said.

The newspaper’s parent company, Meyer and three current or former staffers have filed federal lawsuits against the city of Marion and current and former local officials, including Cody.

A voicemail seeking comment was left at a cellphone number believed to belong to Cody. It wasn’t clear who might represent him in the potential criminal case, and his attorneys in multiple federal lawsuits over the raid did not return a telephone message.

The search warrants authorizing the police raid accused Meyer and reporter Phyllis Zorn of identity theft and other computer crimes over their accessing the driving record of a local business owner who was seeking a liquor license. Zorn verified the record through a state database available online. The prosecutors said Cody appeared to think — incorrectly — that Zorn had to impersonate the business owner to get access.

The business owner gave police a written statement two days before the raid, but prosecutors said two pages of it were absent from material turned over to their investigators in September 2023.

The prosecutors’ report also referenced text messages between Cody and the business owner after the raid. The business owner has said that Cody asked her to delete text messages between them, fearing people could get wrong idea about their relationship, which she said was professional and platonic.

The report said information about the texts would be included in the criminal complaint.