(TheLastPatriotNews.com) – Over his actions following a police raid on a local newspaper last year, two special prosecutors announced that they would charge a former Kansas police chief with obstruction of justice.
Prosecutors Marc Bennett and Barry Wilkerson concluded in their 124-page report that the staff at the Marion County Record had committed no crimes before the raid on its offices and the home of its publisher, led by former Marion police chief Gideon Cody.
They found that the search warrants were signed by a judge, based on false information from an “inadequate investigation,” and not legally justified.
Moreover, bodycam footage from the 2023 raid shows 98-year-old Joan Meyer, the co-owner of the paper, telling officers, “Get out of my house!”
While prosecutors found no evidence that officers “believed they were posing a risk to Mrs. Meyer’s life,” they alleged that Cody obstructed an official judicial process in the weeks following the raid.
Cody resigned as police chief in October, and it remains unclear whether he will face a felony or misdemeanor charge, as the criminal complaint had not been filed by Monday.
Bennett, the district attorney in Sedgwick County, and Wilkerson, the chief prosecutor in Riley County, were appointed by the state’s attorney general after the Marion County prosecutor recused himself due to a conflict of interest.
Meyer expressed gratitude that prosecutors found the newspaper’s staff committed no crimes but questioned why it took a year. He also expressed frustration that Cody was the only official facing criminal charges.
Additionally, the search warrants for the raid accused Meyer and reporter Phyllis Zorn of identity theft and other computer crimes for accessing the driving record of a local business owner seeking a liquor license.
While Zorn verified the record through a state database available online, prosecutors said Cody mistakenly believed that Zorn had to impersonate the business owner to access the record.
The business owner provided a written statement to police two days before the raid, but prosecutors noted that two pages were missing from the materials given to their investigators in September 2023.
Furthermore, the prosecutors’ report also mentioned text messages between Cody and the business owner after the raid. The business owner claimed Cody asked her to delete messages between them, fearing people might misunderstand their professional and platonic relationship.
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