Small town politics can be vicious and personal under the wrong circumstances.
Petty feuds can be blown way out of proportion and literally rip a town apart.
But a corrupt police chief is finally getting a heavy dose of karma after his unconstitutional, authoritarian actions led to this death.
Welcome to Marion
Few people would think there were any problems in the small town of Marion, Kansas, a town north of Wichita that has less than 2,000 residents.
The county of Marian has one newspaper, The Marion County Record.
The paper’s co-owner and publisher was 98-year-old Joan Meyer, but she collapsed and died the day after the corrupt Marion Police Department raided her home in one of the most brazen authoritarian, anti-freedom acts America has seen in a small town.
The story started with local restaurant owner Kerri Newell, who was illegally operating her business under the liquor license of the hotel it was housed in while applying for her own license.
The newspaper received a tip that Newell had a misdemeanor DUI conviction 15 years ago and investigated the matter, only to have Newell accuse the paper of illegally obtaining her driving record.
A misdemeanor DUI conviction does not mean you cannot get a liquor license in Kansas.
Nevertheless, Newell claimed that the paper had somehow engaged in “identity theft,” giving a corrupt local police chief an opening to obtain a search warrant for the newspaper, even though a mere accusation comes nowhere close to justifying probable cause for such a warrant.
But instead of merely executing the search warrant, the Marion Police Department behaved as if it were the FBI being given the greenlight to raid a former President’s home.
The police stormed the newspaper’s offices, seizing computers and cell phones, before also raiding the homes of Meyer and a city council member.
The video of the raid on Meyer’s home went viral as the 98-year-old rightfully slammed her walker and yelled at the cops for such a brazenly unconstitutional action.
It was later revealed that the reporter had actually used publicly available open records for the story.
Police Chief Investigated
The Chief of Police, Gidion Cody, decided to retire after the incident in the hope he could avoid being held accountable for his corruption and abuse of power.
The Marion County District Attorney asked for another prosecutor to investigate the incident, and recommended that the police chief be charged with one felony, “interference with the judicial process.”
If convicted he could go to jail for up to 23 months.
For some reason, though, Cody called Newell and gave her all the details of the raid – he also texted her details, but asked that she delete them, which she did.
The warrant Cody used for the raids was faulty because he did an inadequate investigation prior to the raid.
The paper and the estate of the late Meyer rightfully filed a $10 million lawsuit – the city’s budget is only $9 million.
“The prosecutors also said there was no “gross deviation” from how officers served other search warrants in the past,” the Associated Press reported. “However, Eric Meyer said seven officers came to the house for the search.”
“‘A couple of weeks earlier, they conducted a raid on the home of a suspected child rapist who was known to have guns in his house, and they only sent two cops for that,’ he said,” the report added.
The lawsuit was settled on July 8 for $235,000.
The owner of the Marion paper was a tough journalist, who taught journalism for 25 years before returning to run his hometown’s paper.
He had a habit of getting under the skin of local businesspeople and elected officials.
US Political Daily will keep you updated on any developments to this ongoing story.
