A federal lawsuit is now planned.
In this interview, the subject of the Kansas Newspaper raid speculates that the motive comes from “a confluence of personal animus from the mayor, a personal attempt to intimidate us from the police chief, and basic incompetence from the judge and the county attorney.” Judges and county attorneys/district attorneys being rubber stamps for corrupt cops have caused needless deaths and trampled on folks rights plenty in the past.
It’s a weird headline seeing as in the actual interview they offer their speculation which seems like they have a pretty good idea.
Props for adding it here as I was just commenting to complain about the headline!
This whole thing is shitty. The restaurant owner had a DUI years ago, which she was hiding because she really wanted her restaurant to get a (very lucrative) alcohol license. She was also repeatedly driving on a suspended license due to the DUI, something that the the local cops knew and completely ignored. Possibly because the DA’s brother owns the hotel the restaurant is in, and once they have an alcohol license he can raise the rent, maybe by an indecent amount. Oh, and multiple people have alleged that the police chief left his previous paid-twice-as-much job in Kansas City due to multiple serious accusations of sexual assault.
The Marion Record had investigated both the DUI and the sexual assault allegations, but had decided not to print either story due to journalistic concerns (they suspected the divorcing husband may have illegally accessed his wife’s accounts to send them copies of the DUI information, and none of the people bringing up the police chief’s alleged history would go on the record and the KC police personnel department wouldn’t give any information either).
Some locals says that the Record is “too aggressive” in it’s reporting, while others think that revealing this kind of thing is what newspapers are supposed to do. And in the meantime, the restaurant owner has gotten her liquor license, the hotel owner can (presumably) raise the rent, and the police chief got to keep the newspaper’s computers for five days - including (just ever-so-conveniently) the computer that contained the information the paper had on the people who were saying the police chief had left because of the sexual assault allegations. But I’m sure he never tried to find that information in the five days they had the computers because that would’ve been unethical, wouldn’t it …
The good news is that apparently the newspaper’s insurance is going to cover most of the costs of getting their equipment back, and they have a really nice lawsuit they’re going to go ahead with. I’m not sure how the lawsuit will go, what with qualified immunity:
Qualified immunity is a judge-made legal protection that shields government officials from claims of unconstitutional conduct. It is a unique and specialized defense available only to government actors and can, if applied, allow those actors to avoid responsibility for constitutional violations.
But who knows? Hopefully the town (the sheriff) and county (the judge) get hit with a really nice large fine, maybe even an actual punishment. There’s also a chance that the town/county’s insurance won’t cover the payout, which will suck for the residents.
The judge and county attorney would likely be shielded by qualified immunity, in my opinion. The police chief who wrote the affidavit, executed the warrant, and ran his mouth on Facebook (he hasn’t run his mouth since the county attorney withdrew the warrant for insufficient evidence btw) while having potentially ulterior motives might not find it so easy, however. Qualified immunity generally shields incompetence, but not malice.
Edit: I will note as an aside that the hotel already had a liquor license, the owner just didn’t want to keep it under his name when the restaurant was the one running the bar.
Thanks for the clarification! My understanding was that the liquor license could not be transferred, and that it was due to expire this week anyway, thus the rush for the new one.
Do you think the judge would/should be censured in some way? She apparently signed off without an affidavit of probable cause, and there was no actual urgency to the search warrant. Plus she should have (theoretically, at least) known that you can’t (generally) use search warrantss on newspapers.
I’m not sure how much the DA (CA) was involved. With the county apparently being run this unofficially, it’s possible the sheriff went straight to the judge. I will note that the DA is the brother of the hotel owner, though whether that figured into his/her calculations (if indeed they were involved) I don’t know.
I wonder if someone in her office rubber stamped it, literally.
Thanks for the summary of the whole story! I didn’t get the whole picture from the article. Appreciate it.
Would this technically be the Streisand effect? Trying to cover some shit up for it national attention. The irony is always great.
No one outside of that community would have heard about the Police Chief’s dirty laundry, or that restaurant owner’s DUI. Now it’s national news, and all eyes are on it. It’s not technically the Streisand Effect, it’s EXACTLY the Streisand Effect.
What is the legal justification for this raid?
That’s the thing! There is none!
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Well I’m just curious how a judge approved this and whether there was malfeasance there. Did the police lie to get this warrant or was the judge rubber stamping their requests when there was no real justification? Who should be held accountable may depend on those answers.
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While there’s inevitably going to be a lot of finger-pointing, the main “villains” seem to be the sheriff (who seems to be retaliating against what he perceives as “newspaper overreach”, and maybe because it might give him the opportunity to find out who was passing along the sexual misconduct allegations), the judge (who seems to have just rubber-stamped the search warrant, with good ol’ boy network assurances that the paperwork would follow later on), and maybe the DA - I’m not sure if s/he was involved in this clusterfuck.
But the thing is, all three of them are public officials. And they’re going to claim qualified immunity:
Qualified immunity is a judge-made legal protection that shields government officials from claims of unconstitutional conduct. It is a unique and specialized defense available only to government actors and can, if applied, allow those actors to avoid responsibility for constitutional violations.
Qualified Immunity has been thrust into the spotlight in cases of misconduct by law enforcement. When sued for constitutional violations, police officers frequently claim qualified immunity applies and therefore the case should be dismissed. [per the Kansas ACLU]
But does that actually hurt the ones responsible?
The town is responsible for the employees they hire and the behaviors they allow.
I think you vastly overestimate the amount of control the average citizen has in keeping those people there, especially in small towns like that
Yet another case of the taxpayer getting fucked by corrupt cops.
My question is when is the criminal investigation happening? Even if the paper gets a huge payday from the city, it doesn’t change anything unless the police, judge and DA end up in court for this blatantly illegal act.
Kobach said the KBI isn’t investigating the police there, so it’s not coming from the state level.
There needs to be large scale protests for citizens to demand protection of their civil rights.
I don’t know anything about small US towns but these stories always remind me of stories from Jack Reacher involving small town corruption. Pretty incredible.
