A former Kansas police chief who led a widely condemned raid on a local newspaper in 2023 has been charged with one felony count of obstruction of justice.
Gideon Cody, who resigned in October shortly after being suspended over the raid on the Marion County Record newspaper, stands accused of persuading a potential witness for an investigation into his conduct to withhold information from authorities.
If convicted, Cody faces between seven and 23 months in prison. VOA could not reach Cody on Tuesday at phone numbers listed for him.
The charge, which was filed Monday, comes just over one year after the Aug. 11, 2023, raid on the weekly newspaper. Press freedom groups and government officials condemned the raid as a flagrant violation of the First Amendment.
“This raid was so egregious,” Katherine Jacobsen, the U.S. and Canada program coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists, told VOA. “It’s really important that there has been a rigorous investigation into what happened, because this kind of police behavior shouldn’t have happened in the first place.”
At the time of the incident, Cody said the raid was over an identity theft complaint that a local restaurant owner had filed after the Record accessed her driving records. But during the raid itself, Cody rifled through records about himself, body camera footage showed.
The Record, meanwhile, maintained that the raid was unlawful because the newspaper had engaged in basic journalistic practices by using the state Revenue Department’s online search engine to access the driving records.
Officers also raided the home of Record publisher Eric Meyer and his mother, Joan, and the home of then-Vice Mayor Ruth Herbel, who had been critical of then-Mayor David Mayfield, who had previously defended Cody's actions, according to The Wichita Eagle.
Joan Meyer, 98, died one day after the raid. Eric Meyer blamed her death on the stress caused by the raid.
Early last week, special prosecutors in the case released a 124-page final report on the raid, in which they confirmed the Record had done nothing wrong and revealed plans to file charges against Cody.
“We are gratified that we have finally, officially been vindicated,” Meyer told VOA last week. He also welcomed that Cody would be held accountable for his role in the raid.
Record lawyer Bernie Rhodes agreed. “They concluded that this never should have happened in the first place, because there was never a so-called crime to investigate,” he told VOA last week.
In the aftermath of the raid, several lawsuits have been filed against Cody, the city, its former mayor and other government officials. The newspaper’s lawsuit over the raid is ongoing, Rhodes said.
