A local business owner’s driving records were indeed at the center of the controversial police raids of a Kansas newspaper, newly released affidavits confirmed on Sunday.
The documents were shared with media outlets—including the Daily Beast—confirming previous reports that a Marion County Record reporter’s investigation prompted the controversial raid. Whether or not it was justified is another question.
Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody claimed that reporter Phyllis Zorn engaged in identity theft when she obtained the driving records of restaurant owner Kari Newell. Under Kansas state law, these records are typically confidential, but can be accessed by providing a driver’s license number and date of birth.
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“Downloading the document involved either impersonating the victim or lying about the reasons why the record was being sought,” Cody claimed in an affidavit.
But Zorn and the paper’s team insist that no crimes were committed in her use of the state’s public archives for Newell’s license history, and that the records were obtained only after receiving Newell’s license number and birth date from a tipster in relation to a 2008 drunk driving conviction.
Zorn said that she “went to a Kansas Department of Revenue website” for the info, adding that “not to my knowledge was anything illegal or wrong.”
Marion County Record’s “infuriated” attorney Bernie Rhodes said that the info from the affidavits prove that no laws were broken prior to the unjust raids.
“The affidavits confirm that the only ‘crime’ being investigated was the crime of reporting,” Rhodes told The Daily Beast. “The affidavits show that Chief Cody knew that a source provided Kari Newell’s driver’s record to both the paper and the vice-mayor—so neither the reporter nor the vice-mayor illegally obtained anything, yet they were the subject of the search. All the paper did was attempt to verify the authenticity of the record, using a public website operated by the Kansas Department of Revenue. No laws were broken.”
The Marion County Record’s office, the house of the paper’s owner Eric Meyer and house of Marion Vice Mayor Ruth Herbel were all raided by police on Aug. 11 over the “unlawful” retrieval of Newell’s driving records. In Herbel’s case, cops accused her sharing the same tip the newspaper received with Marion City Administrator Brogan Jones.
But the raids—which were deemed unjust by the county prosecutor—sparked an international debate over press freedom that thrust the small paper into the limelight. Meyer said the Record has since gained 4,000 more subscribers as it continues to plead its innocence.
Meyer claims that the searches also led to the death of the paper’s 98-year-old co-owner—his mother, Joan. She collapsed a day after the raids, with her son claiming that she was overwhelmed by the incident and couldn’t bring herself to eat afterwards.
Now, Rhodes says that the paper is considering a lawsuit against the city for the intrusive raids.
“We have said all along we intend to sue unless we can reach some type of resolution with the city,” he told The Daily Beast. “That seems increasingly unlikely.”
