The KSHB 41 I-Team obtained three affidavits in relation to the raids on Marion County Record, the newspaper owner’s home and the city vice mayor’s home.
The affidavits, provided by the attorney for the newspaper, lay out what evidence police used to get a judge to sign off on the warrant to search the properties.
So someone at the newspaper obtained a driving record from state computers, possibly illegally. And someone at the newspaper threatened to publish a story about it.
Doesn’t seem like enough to tear apart the whole organization but I’m no lawyer.
ETA: Corrected above, not an officer, a restaurant owner. Athos78 and teft explain it pretty well in the replies.
So someone at the newspaper obtained an officer’s driving record from state computers, possibly illegally.
Accessing public websites is legal everywhere in the country.
And someone at the newspaper threatened to publish a story about the officer.
This is also legal everywhere in the country.
One correction: The driving record was for a restaurant owner, not a police officer.
The whole thing is shitty. The restaurant owner had a DUI years ago, which she was hiding because she really wanted her restaurant to get a (very lucrative) alcohol license. She was also repeatedly driving on a suspended license due to the DUI, something that the the local cops knew and completely ignored. Possibly because the DA’s brother owns the hotel the restaurant is in, and once they have an alcohol license he can raise the rent, maybe by an indecent amount. Oh, and multiple people have alleged that the police chief left his previous paid-twice-as-much job in Kansas City due to multiple serious accusations of sexual assault.
The Marion Record had investigated both the DUI and the sexual assault allegations, but had decided not to print either story due to journalistic concerns (they suspected the divorcing husband may have illegally accessed his wife’s accounts to send them copies of the DUI information, and none of the people bringing up the police chief’s alleged history would go on the record and the KC police personnel department wouldn’t give any information either).
Some locals says that the Record is “too aggressive” in it’s reporting, while others think that revealing this kind of thing is what newspapers are supposed to do. And in the meantime, the restaurant owner has gotten her liquor license, the hotel owner can (presumably) raise the rent, and the police chief got to keep the newspaper’s computers for five days - including (just ever-so-conveniently) the computer that contained the information the paper had on the people who were saying the police chief had left because of the sexual assault allegations. But I’m sure he never tried to find that information in the five days they had the computers because that would’ve been unethical, wouldn’t it …
You’ve got it wrong.
The newspaper received a tip about a local business owner saying the business owner had been driving without a license.
The paper didn’t publish said info but they verified the info in a state website which is perfectly legal. The newspaper also reached out to the cops saying they had received this info.
At no point was anything illegal done until the cops illegally raided a newspaper.
