7 ms·
Ex-Kansas police chief who raided local newspaper criminally charged
- toomuchtodo 2y agoRelated: Kansas police chief who led the raid on the Marion County Record has resigned - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37757664 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37757664 - Oct 2023 (8 comments) Police chief who led raid of Marion County Record has been suspended - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37722438 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37722438 - Oct 2023 (48 comments) Marion County atty withdraws search warrant against Kansas paper, returns items - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37151697 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37151697 - Aug 2023 (37 comments) Police raid of a Kansas newsroom raises alarms about violations of press freedom - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37120350 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37120350 - Aug 2023 (146 comments) Small Kansas newspaper says co-owner, 98, collapsed and died after police raid - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37120188 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37120188 - Aug 2023 (43 comments) Co-owner of Kansas newspaper dies after police raid - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37114892 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37114892 - Aug 2023 (4 comments) Illegal raids contribute to death of newspaper co-owner - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37105764 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37105764 - Aug 2023 (103 comments) A conversation with a newspaper owner raided by cops - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37102271 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37102271 - Aug 2023 (118 comments) Police stage ‘chilling’ raid on Marion County newspaper - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37096015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37096015 - Aug 2023 (138 comments)
- macintux 2y agoI hope that’s not the last charge levied. A police raid designed to retaliate against journalists for being journalists should result in more than one tangential prosecution.
- toomuchtodo 2y agoThere was also a settlement, although civil litigation continues. > A former reporter for a weekly Kansas newspaper has agreed to accept $235,000 to settle part of her federal lawsuit over a police raid on the paper that made a small community the focus of a national debate over press freedoms. > The settlement removed the former police chief in Marion from the lawsuit filed by former Marion County Record reporter Deb Gruver, but it doesn't apply to two other officials she sued over the raid: the Marion County sheriff and the county's prosecutor. Gruver's lawsuit is among five federal lawsuits filed over the raid against the city, the county and eight current or former elected officials or law enforcement officers. > Gruver's attorney did not immediately respond to emails Friday seeking comment. An attorney for the city, its insurance company, the former chief and others declined to comment but released a copy of the June 25 settlement agreement after the Record filed an open records request. He also provided a copy to The Associated Press. https://apnews.com/article/kansas-newspaper-raid-lawsuit-b0b825c3643d407a0379893256db224d https://apnews.com/article/kansas-newspaper-raid-lawsuit-b0b...
- givemeethekeys 2y agoDoes the defense pay for all the legal expenses incurred in addition to the settled amount? Lawsuits ain't cheap.
- jahewson 2y agoIt depends. Often when a suit involves the government or the public interest then there’s a statute in place that awards fees to the winner.
- batch12 2y ago> He also provided a copy to The Associated Press. Interesting way to reduce the value of the info and effort for the request. Send a copy to the paper's competition first/too
- cookiengineer 2y agoIt's the only way that he can guarantee that the information is distributed in its original form and not through the victim's bias. So I'd argue that from his perspective, that was definitely the best (read as: most democratic) option.
- phone8675309 2y agoIf they're going to push to arrest peaceful marijuana users and ruin their lives with a drug charge then the people involved in this raid should see the inside of a cell at least as long as someone up on possession because what the raid plotters have done is more corrosive to a free society than anyone smoking weed at a concert.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y ago[flagged]
- ceejayoz 2y ago> Does it matter that it is a police raid? Yes.
- lolinder 2y ago> It is unprincipled to be okay with one and not the other. The principle is very clear: officers of the law are given monopoly on the use of force by the state. That state-enforced monopoly on force comes with an enormous amount of responsibility and that responsibility means that breaches of trust should be prosecuted with prejudice. The other situation is a private entity making a decision about what kind of content it wants to host on equipment that it pays for. We can talk about whether certain companies are too big to have full freedom to make that call, but creating a parallel between that and state-ordained police officers wielding guns barging into people's homes to intimidate them into shutting up is either naive, ignorant, or disingenuous.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y ago> The principle is very clear: officers of the law are given monopoly on the use of force by the state. That state-enforced monopoly on force comes with an enormous amount of responsibility and that responsibility means that breaches of trust should be prosecuted with prejudice. I don’t disagree with that aspect but also think it doesn’t invalidate what I said. After all, corporations operating the digital public square also have monopolies over a certain kind of power and that power and responsibility is far greater than any individual police officer given their reach. > but creating a parallel between that and state-ordained police officers wielding guns barging into people's homes to intimidate them into shutting up is either naive, ignorant, or disingenuous. At the scale these tech companies operate, their influence over our our political process and daily lives is far more dangerous. Freedom of speech and press are part of the first amendment in the US for a reason - a free society depends on that right and any violation of it is bad. In my view the end effect on suppressing journalism and speech is the same, whether it is a censorship friendly tech giant or a police officer breaking the law, and therefore the parallel makes sense.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- tantalor 2y agoSection 242 of Title 18 makes it a crime for a person acting under color of any law to willfully deprive a person of a right or privilege protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States. The offense is punishable by a range of imprisonment up to a life term, or the death penalty, depending upon the circumstances of the crime, and the resulting injury, if any. https://www.justice.gov/crt/deprivation-rights-under-color-law https://www.justice.gov/crt/deprivation-rights-under-color-l...
- mikeweiss 2y agoNever heard of this law before... Thanks!
- joe_the_user 2y agoThis is essentially the Federal Government biggest single gun against local corruption - as I recall, it's what officers who beat Rodney King were eventually prosecuted under.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- blackeyeblitzar 2y ago[flagged]
- amanaplanacanal 2y agoIt doesn’t work that way. If it did, the current Supreme Court could be prosecuted for impending a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion, which was decided by a previous Supreme Court.
- qingcharles 2y agoI didn't realize that statute applied to non-violent violations, thank you.
- jmyeet 2y agoI'm honestly surprised this has led to charges. I eagerly await the qualified immunity argument against this. Before we get too excited, there's lots of ways this can go wrong. People don't understand just how rigged the justice system is not to prosecute authority figures including the police. For example: 1. Manu jurisdictions require felony charges to first be approved by a grand jury. This is meant to protect citizens from spurious felony charges. The grand jury proces empanels a group of people, just like a jury, but they'll only hear evidence that the prosecutor presents. There is no defense counsel. The defendant is not present. Anyone interesting in pursuing a prosecution is not present. So what can go wrong? A prosecutor can intentionally bring a weak case and then hang their hat on the grand jury denying to pursue charges. It happens all the time. Why would a prosecutor do this? Because they rely on the police for prosecutions. If a prosecutor gets a reputation for locking up the police then their police witnesses start getting sick and missing court dates. And that prosecutor's conviction rate goes down, which ultimately is the only thing they care about. 2. Judges often either have a prosecution bias or they outright work for the benefit of the prosecution. There can be multiple reasons for this. Many judges are former prosecutors. Depending on your state, judges may be politicians effectively as they have to campaign for their position or their name is on the ballot to extend their term so narratives like "tough on crime" start appearing. There are three big recent examples of this: 1. The YSL trial in Georgia. The judge had ex-parte meetings with witnesses and the prosecution with no defense cousel present during which a witness was coerced to testify for the prosecution by the judge. That judge was ultimately forced to recuse themselves because thsi was such an egregious breach of the rules; 2. The Karen Reed trial in Massachussetts. This wasn't on the news much but was covered heavily on social media, particularly Tiktok. The list of sins by the prosecutors and judges are really too great to enumerate. 3. Alec Baldwin's trial for the death of a crew member on the set of Rust. The prosecution withheld exculpatory evidence from the defense. They hid bullets in a file of another case so the defense would never see it. This led to the case being dismissed with prejudice, rightly so. This is what's called a Brady violation [1]. Now because that was a high-profile case that happened. But sometimes the Brady violation is ignored. In a famous Supreme Court case (Connick v. Thomson [2]), the Supreme Court ruled that if just one prosecutor in an office does a Brady violation then it's fine. It's not a systemic problem. Crazy. Now we have had high profile cases where the police have been successfuly prosecuted, most notably Derek Chauvin. But those really are the exception. We're a long way from a conviction. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brady_disclosure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brady_disclosure [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connick_v._Thompson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connick_v._Thompson
- tomcam 2y ago[flagged]
- tptacek 2y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5701813 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5701813 (Obviously, none of these cases are comparable to what happened in Marion, KS).
- randycupertino 2y agoSort of tangentially related the San Mateo County sheriff flew 4 deputies across the country to raid a car manufacturer as a favor to one of his donor buddies because his custom batmobile was delayed: https://abc7news.com/batmobile-raid-independent-investigation-confidential-report-san-mateo-sheriff/12954540/ https://abc7news.com/batmobile-raid-independent-investigatio... > The head of the task force spent 6 months investigating, and then took a crew of four department personnel to raid the Batmobile garage in Indiana.
- throwoutway 2y agoThe headline (in 2017) attempts to make the case that "Trump could be even worse" than obama in abusing the espionage act. Did history prove that? I found cases where his administration used it, but unclear if it was worse
- tomcam 2y agoTrump put no journalists in jail.
- throwawaycar 2y ago[flagged]
- aussieguy1234 2y agomeanwhile in Australia, journalists get raided and nothing happens https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/feb/17/federal-police-raid-on-abc-over-afghan-files-ruled-valid https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/feb/17/federal-police...
- throwaway48476 2y agoOr get their house firebombed.
- BigJono 2y agoOr get the anti-terror squad put on them for asking a politician a question in the street.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- DiscourseFan 2y agoGod bless America
- bb88 2y agoGo Kansas!
- exabrial 2y agoMake every prosecutor, ag, judge, and lawyer involved go to jail. A bunch of law school white collar imbeciles are going to wash their hands clean of this despite their participation. I’m from Sedgwick county, nearby.
- guywithahat 2y agoThe only charge was against the officer for asking someone to delete texts, none of the charges were because of the raid itself
- frank_bb 2y ago[dead]
- Brett_Riverboat 2y agoI have always felt that any officer of the law charged with breaking the law should face a mandatory doubling of their sentence. They "know the law" and therefore have no excuse. The fact that only one person is being charged despite several others participating in this is just yet one more miscarriage of justice.
- searealist 2y agoHow convenient, your political enemies should be subject to twice all legal penalties.
- Beijinger 2y ago"They know the law" No, they don't. They are police officers, not lawyers. Exactly this causes many problems when, sorry to speak this way, testosterone meets incompetence in law enforcement. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiUkbE_ktHs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiUkbE_ktHs
- Brett_Riverboat 2y agoI know they don't thats why its in quotes.
- runako 2y agoReplace with "should know the law" or "have a duty to know the law" or "know the law better than civilians."
- nullindividual 2y agoOfficers are civilians. Never let them forget that.
- Beijinger 2y agoThe average professional in this country wakes up in the morning, goes to work, comes home, eats dinner, and then goes to sleep, unaware that he or she has likely committed several federal crimes that day. Why? https://www.amazon.de/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/1594035229 https://www.amazon.de/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/...