It sounds like a tragic and suspicious situation, and what I'm most curious about (since this is HN) is whether the federal government will step in, and figure out what's going on.
The Marion Record was in the process of investigating the Marion police chief. He used to work for the Kansas City (MO) PD. Allegedly, he was demoted for "sexual misconduct" before he quit and came to work for Marion.
This reveal comes in an interview of the Marion Record's publisher. It's an interesting read and he's an interesting guy. One of the old school reporters, in a very good way.
https://thehandbasket.substack.com/p/a-conversation-with-the...
The other new development is the Kansas Bureau of Investigation revealed they were part of building the case against the newspaper. KBI didn't participate in the raid, but were otherwise working with the Marion police.
https://kansasreflector.com/2023/08/13/kbi-director-on-mario...
> When the newspaper asked for a copy of the probable cause affidavit required by law to issue a search warrant, the district court issued a signed statement saying no such affidavit was on file, the Record reported.
Not a lawyer and I know it takes quite a lot for a judge to be disciplined but that would seem to be something a judicial conduct board would want to look at.
https://apnews.com/article/marion-kansas-newspaper-raid-aca0...
https://www.mcguirewoods.com/news-resources/publications/med...
[1] https://www.wypr.org/2023-01-23/whats-with-those-the-greates...
I assume you've read or watched "We Own This City"? I'd be curious about your take on it.
Side note but I remember when they first rolled out that Baltimore bench slogan... I vaguely remember some explanations that the previous slogan ("The City that Reads") was also rather "aspirational", given the illiteracy rate.
But I don't think that's what's happening here at all. I have seen this story all over the place in national news. And what I think is that the mere fact that any of us living nowhere near this little town are aware this happened means that the people responsible for it are in deep sh*t. I think they'll be made an example of. I think the state and federal justice systems will be racing each other to make an example of them.
And if I'm right about that, it's not an upsetting indictment of the system, it's an affirmation of its success.
The choice is in your hands to continue to attribute credibility to institutions that may no longer merit it.
If you publish some awful stuff, other people are allowed to point out that you said awful stuff and there are consequences for that, and that's how it's supposed to work.
You can make "freedom to publish without retribution" possible only by qualifying the kind of publishing and/or the kind of retribution.
You have to prosecute and pursue justice after the crime/s, not before. Justice is rarely a fast event. It's identical to someone walking into a convenience store and robbing it. You can't literally stop that from happening, you have to have a justice system that will prosecute crime. There are of course no precogs yet (Minority Report [0]).
What happens next is far more important than that it happened.
> If this is allowed to pass without the people ordering the raid fired, I am not optimistic about what the future holds.
Given the scale of the US, that's overly dramatic for sure. All sorts of bad things - far worse than this - happen on a small level in the US across the states, that have practically no impact on the wider nation.
Given that the KBI (Kansas Bureau of Investigation) was in on it, and given that a Kansas district judge signed a search warrant in the absence of an affidavit (which I'm sure this judge was well-aware was needed, but it seems this judge simply didn't care about the rule of law), one can say that multiple organs of the Kansas state acted in cohort to violate the First Amendment.
OP wrote:
> If this is allowed to pass without the people ordering the raid fired, I am not optimistic about what the future holds
If the state of Kansas doesn't hold the people who did this to account (especially, at the very least by impeaching this judge), we absolutely need the federal government to step in, and hopefully both prosecute & imprison the individuals involved in this egregious rights violation. IANAL, but 18 U.S. Code § 242 "Deprivation of rights under color of law" (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/242) seems applicable here.
If both Kansas and especially the federal government fail to prosecute the hold the people who ordered this raid into account, I'm not particularly optimistic about the future of the U.S. either.
While I'm sympathetic to your comment in isolation, do you think there is any chance that after the slow wheels of justice do turn, these violent thugs and their facilitators are actually going to end up in prison for armed assault, robbery, kidnapping, criminal conspiracy, etc? This is the breakdown in the rule of law that people are outraged about, regardless of the somewhat unreasonable desire that justice should happen quicker. If justice were merely slow but still dependable, people wouldn't be nearly as outraged.
Also if there were a consistent pattern of rogue law enforcement employees getting designated as having acted outside of their state-granted authority, prosecuted as regular criminals, and going to prison, this particular incident would have been less likely to happen in the first place. So given the larger context it's a bit specious to say we just need to give the situation time, when time mostly serves to make the widespread attention fade.
First you say it's really important to prosecute all crime because justice is about the response to crime.
Then you say it's silly to be worried that a bunch of "small crime" (furthermore, there's nothing to indicate in this case that this is a small crime) goes unpunished all the time.
Which one is it? Do we care about crime or don't we? I'd say it's actually the little crimes going unpunished that worry me the most... car theft, shoplifting, etc. These signal to participants that it's okay to behave in a way that is not in line with the stated laws of the land. Building this safe space for petty crime is far more dangerous than having a one-off corrupt asshole who committed a more "serious" crime run free on a legal technicality, because the safe-space normalizes bad behavior and desensitizes society to crime.
It asks for "your" information to find the record, but based on the allowed uses you can definitely get records for other people. I would say a journalist accessing DUI records would fall under permitted use case M. That accessing this is identity theft is a farcical claim.
Pretending to _be_ someone, _stealing their identity_, is identity theft. Absolutely nothing in this story sounds like that, and it sounds like the warrant is entirely farcical.
"They're afraid. They're really afraid that the police power is unchecked, and that they can be punished like this."
In both cases he says that they are investigating allegations. In fact, at one point it is said, they turned over information to the police because they thought it might be related to a civil matter (somebody's divorce). They don't feel they have enough information to make the allegations public.
Something never change but the semantics, police are trying to find the leak, IMHO.
> Newell said she believes the newspaper violated the law to get her personal information as it checked on the status of her driver’s license after a 2008 drunken driving conviction and other driving violations.
> The newspaper countered that it received that information unsolicited, which it verified through public online records. It eventually decided to not run a story because it wasn’t sure the source who supplied it had obtained it legally. But the newspaper did run a story on the city council meeting, in which Newell confirmed that she’d had a DUI conviction and that she had continued to drive even after her license was suspended.
[1] https://kansasreflector.com/2023/08/11/police-stage-chilling...
[2] https://kiowacountypress.net/content/opinion-powerful-voices...
Just, Devil's Advocate.
Or, I guess, "Founder's Advocate"?
But isn't that what we're supposed to do here in the US?
I mean, you know, Constitutionally speaking?
Presumably the restaurant owner accusing the newspaper editor of identity theft gives good cover for the police chief to get a warrant and search for anything else (ie information about investigations into himself). That does give a veneer of legality to the raid.
I would have agreed, if it hadn't been for the County Attorney (who according to their website is "the chief law enforcement officer in Marion County."[0]) putting his foot in his mouth, and the paper exposing the relationship between him and the restaurant owner. It makes it pretty clear what actually is going on here.
> A Record reporter later requested a copy of the probable cause affidavit necessary for issuance of the search warrant.
> District court, where such items are supposed to be filed, issued a signed statement saying no affidavit was on file.
> County attorney Joel Ensey, whose brother owns the hotel where Newell operates her restaurant, was asked for it but said he would not release it because it was “not a public document.”
---
[0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20230215034526/https://www.mario...
I honestly can't see how anyone with a law degree would have even touched this situation under the same circumstances. Journalists? Preexisting business relationships that are documented and freely available to the public.
Jeez, at least hide stuff in holding companies or trusts or something. What were these guys doing?
> County attorney Joel Ensey, whose brother owns the hotel where Newell operates her restaurant
[1] https://peabodykansas.com/direct/restaurateur_accuses_paper_...
What was originally intended to be a show of intent, a brassy display of the sort of wheeling-and-dealing political life that has always existed in small rural towns has detonated with a spectacle not seen since the Beirut explosion. This is the sort of scandal that disbands police departments under consent-decree and sends your entire small town leadership from the city council up to the mayor out the door.
If the point was to ensure a coverup, you couldnt have done worse. constitutional transgressions like this have the ability to dissolve the Marion entirely.
[1] https://marionrecord.com/credit/subscription:MARION+COUNTY+R...
Is that wrong?
I am asking here about the actual interpretation of the law, not the "ideal world" scenario...
This is the best case I could find:
The police can and will do all kinds of illegal things, regardless of the law. It's up to the courts and DoJ, etc, to sort that out after the fact, there's not much anyone can do before it happens.
<Edit>
Need to explain reference.
There is a video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1_RKu-ESCY
It kind of glorifies small town justice/vigilantism. Like, the rest of the country is falling apart, but the small town wouldn't let that happen (wink, wink).
https://www.npr.org/2023/07/20/1188966935/jason-aldean-try-t...
But then the original post, story about small town sheriff raiding a newspaper kind of shows indications of small town corruption.
So the point is about the dichotomy of 'small towns' being pure and glorifying taking "American Justice" into their own hands, and also how they can corrupt those same values.
The original post is a counter story about how things can go wrong there too. You can have small town 'justice' also take the form of actions that go against American Values like freedom of speech.
Remember, hanging negros for looking at women is what would happen in a small town in america.
From the website it states the following.
"It is a snapshot of the media freedom situation based on an evaluation of pluralism, independence of the media, quality of legislative framework and safety of journalists in each country and region."
Is there an different list to compare against?
@Kapura since your country is big: would it be better to compare each state individually?
Traumatizing a 98yo woman to death also doesn't help the police's image.
https://boingboing.net/2023/08/14/cops-raided-a-smalltown-ne...
So will the Stasis be charged for manslaughter? Oh right this government is totally corrupt.
https://www.fbi.gov/about/faqs/does-the-fbi-investigate-graf...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobbs_Act
Really goes to show you how wide interstate commerce clause goes.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/nov/16/fbi-entrapment...
https://theintercept.com/2015/07/13/another-terror-arrest-an...
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a47390/alabama-isis-pe...
https://thefreethoughtproject.com/the-state/fbi-frames-menta...
https://www.democracynow.org/2015/3/19/how_the_fbi_created_a...
The police officers, individually can have qualified immunity. The governments that employ them do not.
Pointing out hypocrisy is giving "them control over you"? TFA is posted on npr.org.
