Kansas Paper Raided by Town Sheriff Who Didn’t Like Them Investigating His Corruption

UPDATE: The police chief has been suspended.

The police chief whose “Gestapo”-style raid on a small-town newspaper has become the focus of national outrage was being investigated by its reporters over claims of alleged sexual misconduct.

Gideon Cody and every officer in the Marion Police Department stormed into the Marion County Record’s offices Friday with a search warrant and seized computers and servers.

They also raided the home of the editor and publisher, Eric Meyer, and his 98-year-old mother, Joan Meyer, the paper’s co-owner.

She died the following day of “shock and grief,” Meyer said, stressed and unable to sleep when police seized her computer and smart speaker, as well as her son’s cellphone and even his router.

He had answered the door thinking it was her Meals on Wheels delivery.

The Marion County Record, published weekly, has served the rural communities of Marion County (pop. 11,712) since 1869, and until now had never been at the center of a national battle over freedom of the press.

But as First Amendment advocates spoke out against the raid, it emerged that the newspaper had been investigating Cody, 54, after receiving an “outpouring of calls” claiming he had retired from his last police post to avoid demotion over sexual misconduct allegations.

Cody joined the Marion County Police Department in late April after retiring as a captain in Kansas City, Mo., where he worked for 24 years.

Eric Meyer told the Handbasket Substack that his outlet had been contacted by Cody’s former colleagues about the claims of sexual misconduct, but that the six-plus anonymous sources ultimately never went on the record and reporters couldn’t obtain Cody’s personnel file.

The explosive claims — as well as the identities of the people who made them — were contained on one of the computers seized during the raid on the newspaper’s office, Meyer said.

“I may be paranoid that this has anything to do with it, but when people come and seize your computer, you tend to be a little paranoid,” Meyer told the Handbasket.

The Kansas City Police Department told The Post it could not discuss whether Cody had been investigated during his tenure on the force, citing the state’s Sunshine Law.

“This is the type of stuff that, you know, [Russian President] Vladimir Putin does, that Third World dictators do,” Meyer, 69, told the Associated Press. “This is Gestapo tactics from World War II.”

A search warrant for the raid says it was issued over an allegation of “identity theft” by its reporters.

The claim was made by local restaurateur Kari Newell, after someone sent the paper and a member of the local council documents that showed she had a DUI, which would make it illegal for her to have a liquor license.

……The paper never published her DUI details and Meyer denied acting illegally, claiming he believed they had been sent to the paper’s reporter, Deb Gruver, because of legal sparring between Newell, 46, and her ex-husband.

During the raid, Cody seized Gruver’s cellphone from her hand, injuring a finger she had previously dislocated.

“We didn’t publish it because we couldn’t nail it down to the point that we thought it was ready for publication,” Meyer told the Kansas City Star. “[Cody] didn’t know who our sources were. He does now.”

Cody, 54, declined to respond to inquiries Monday whether allegations of sexual misconduct were filed against him while working as a Kansas City police officer, referring The Post to the Kansas Bureau of Investigation.