News

What pisses me off is that all the coverage seems to have very quickly forgotten that federal law requires that cops are supposed to subpoena reporters and newspapers, not get search warrants. But the police chief had his own axe to grind (the paper was investigating allegations he'd left his last job just before being fired for making sexist remarks) and just like ... broke the law. He also got to stay on the job for another two months after the raid because the county didn't want to fire him because of the separation clause in his contract and they didn't want to pay out. [There's no word on whether they actually did pay out when he finally left; I guess they'll find out when they publish the county budget. Given the way they've closed ranks against the newspaper, I strongly suspect they paid him off.]

The county has refused to turn over cell phone records, texts and documents related to the investigation: some percentage have mysteriously disappeared. Other communications were, contrary to state law, done on personal phones and the county has absolutely refused to try to get those into evidence.

The police chief was, of course, replaced by one of his buddy cops - one of the ones who raided the paper, the one who found the information on the paper's investigation into the chief and immediately called the chief over to go through the files, even though they weren't covered by the warrant.

The judge that signed off on the bogus search warrants, who apparently didn't realize she was helping break federal law and infringing on the first amendment, had the complaint against her dismissed.

The restaurant owner who the paper was investigating because she'd been driving without a license for 15 years due to a DUI, and who was trying to get a liquor license for her restaurant (and shouldn't have been able to because of the DUI) - the town council said they didn't have the authority to not give her one and gave her one.

As far as I can tell, the was no investigation into the County Attorney who should've validated the search warrants before passing them on the the judge. The interesting bit is that the County Attorney is the brother of the guy who owns the building the restaurant is in, and the owner of course wants the restaurant to have a liquor license so he can make bank. [It seems like drinking is extremely popular out there: the judge also has two arrests for DUI.]

The Deputy Mayor who was trying to find out if the bar owner should be eligible for a liquor license was ousted in the next election. The reporter at the Record who was not working on the restaurant owner story and who shouldn't have been approached by the cops at all - except she was working on the story about the police chief's sexist remarks so she was approached by the cops, her equipment seized including her personal cell phone, and she herself was injured by the cops - she had to leave the profession entirely because of the stress; she's no longer a journalist at all. Eric Meyer is still fighting, but he's lost his mother.

The Marion Record just won some very prestigious journalism award, which is nice, but doesn't really make up for the fact that the decent people in this story all seem to have lost things they valued, while the corrupt people here all seem to have come out with most of the things they wanted :(

I'm really glad I don't live in one of these small, corrupt, go-along-to-get-along small towns - and I'm also really glad that some of the people who do live there still do their best to do what's right.