Kansas reporter injured when cellphone seized during police raid of newsroom

Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody, who spearheaded the August 2023 raid on the offices of the Marion County Record and the home of the Kansas newspaper’s co-owners, resigned on Oct. 2, 2023, several days after he was suspended, the Record reported.

Just prior to his resignation, on Sept. 30, the Record also reported that newly reviewed body camera footage captured during the raid showed Cody reading files in reporter Deb Gruver’s desk drawer, even though Gruver was not mentioned in the warrant application for the raid.

While reading the files, one of which included information on a confidential source in an investigation of the police chief, Cody is reported to have said, “Hmm. Keeping a personal file on me. I don’t care.”

Record Publisher Eric Meyer previously told The Kansas City Star that prior to the raid the weekly newspaper had been investigating Cody’s background and allegations of wrongdoing.

Gruver is currently suing Cody in federal court for violations of her First and Fourth Amendment rights, claiming that both the raid and Cody’s confiscation of her phone were retaliation for Gruver’s investigation into his alleged prior misconduct.

The footage also indicates other discrepancies between law enforcement’s actions during the raid and Cody’s stated reasons for undertaking it. According to the search warrant, the raid was part of an investigation into the Record’s alleged unlawful use of a computer and identity theft to obtain information about local restaurant owner Kari Newell’s prior DUI conviction and driving record.

The body camera footage reveals, however, that Marion police knew at the time how the paper had obtained the information — through a former friend of Newell’s.

The Record recounts how, in the recording, Cody tells reporter Phyllis Zorn that “we’re pretty confident we know that [the former friend] delivered it.” Zorn tells Cody which computer she used to view the document and then verify it via the state Department of Revenue website. Cody asks Zorn if her cellphone was involved in the document viewing or verification; Zorn says no.

Despite this, the Record pointed out, Cody did not stop at confiscating the computer Zorn had indicated. He directed the seizure of three of the Record’s computers and computers at the paper’s co-owners’ home, as well as Zorn’s and Gruver’s cellphones. At the same time, the paper said that the sole copy of the document in question, on a desk a few feet away from one of the confiscated computers, was left untouched.

In a recent filing responding to Gruver’s complaint, Cody claims that he and other law enforcement officers confiscated the newsroom’s computers and Zorn’s cellphone “only after hours of failed attempts by the deputy to secure data from the computers onsite [because] the wireless internet and other data was so slow to download onto the deputy’s equipment.” They decided, he said, that it would be faster “to merely take any equipment that was possibly involved in the illegal download back to the deputy’s office and search the equipment at his station.”

In his filing, Cody denied harboring any desire to retaliate against Gruver or having violated her rights.

The footage also shows Cody on the phone with Newell during the raids, informing her that there was information he could share with her but that he did not want to put it in writing in a text to her, the paper added.

Meanwhile, Gruver resigned from the paper after viewing the body camera footage, the Record reported. “I think watching [it] was a mistake for me,” she wrote in her resignation letter. “I need to do what’s best for my mental health, which isn’t the greatest at the moment.”

The Record added that Gruver said that “she no longer felt comfortable in Marion because some residents didn’t seem to appreciate the journalism she and the Record were attempting to provide.”

Zorn, too, suffered health consequences from the stress of the raid, the Record reported. And Meyer’s 98-year-old mother, Joan Meyer, a co-owner and correspondent for the newspaper, died from sudden cardiac arrest the day after the raid of her home. The Record attributed her death in part to the stress of the raid.

Marion County Record reporter Deb Gruver filed a civil suit in federal court against Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody on Aug. 30, 2023, for violations of her First and Fourth Amendment rights, according to court documents reviewed by the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker.

Cody led the Aug. 11 raid on the Record’s newsroom, at one point “snatching [Gruver’s] phone out of her hand.” Gruver’s complaint points out that Cody’s warrant application for the raid did not mention either Gruver or her phone and that seizing it therefore “exceeded the scope of the warrant.”

The complaint describes Cody’s warrant application and the raid as “unreasonable and unlawful [and] evidence of his malicious intent.” The filing also claims that Gruver’s investigation into Cody’s alleged prior acts of misconduct for the newspaper had “sparked [his] desire for retaliation against her personally.”

Gruver has requested damages exceeding $75,000 as compensation for the “emotional distress, mental anguish and physical injury” she sustained during the raid. Gruver had earlier alleged on Facebook that her previously dislocated finger was reinjured.

“Although I brought this suit in my own name, I’m standing up for journalists across the country,” Gruver told the Kansas Reflector. “It is our constitutional right to do this job without fear of harassment or retribution, and our constitutional rights are always worth fighting for.”

Gruver’s attorney, Blake Shuart, who pointed to Gruver’s 35 years of journalism experience and her previous service as a board member of the Kansas Coalition for Open Government, added, “Gruver is not the one to target for a violation of fundamental constitutional rights. She will fight for herself and her fellow journalists.”