Gideon Cody, the police chief who ordered the raid on the offices of the Marion County Record in Kansas as well as two private homes, has at long last been suspended. The raid — which may have led to the death of the paper’s 98-year-old retired publisher, Joan Meyer — was supposedly related to the Record’s having received confidential records about a local restaurateur. But it came at a time when the paper was investigating allegations of sexually charged and abusive behavior by Cody in his previous job. The Record’s Phyllis Zorn has the details.
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“At long last” is the key phrase here. Cody and his band of thugs should have been suspended immediately pending termination. They also need to permanently lose their LE certification anywhere in the country and be prosecuted under 18 USC 241, conspiring to deny civil rights.
Meanwhile, in a case from late July that has gotten much less attention, probably because no one has died yet, a Guilford County (N.C.) district-court judge seized the notes of a reporter for the Greensboro News & Record without so much as a legally-required hearing. The court also imposed a gag order on the reporter and the paper. And it looks like the vulture capitalists who own the News & Record, Lee Enterprises, are doing nothing to fight this egregious abuse of power by the court. The Assembly (theassemblync.com) has published a good but paywalled article about this case, but it deserves national attention as well.