The video shows that officers, led by Cody, searched the Record newsroom after interviewing Zorn, Gruver and the newspaper's business manager, and escorting them out of the building. There appeared to be no corresponding video of the same moment from Cody's own camera. The video of Cody at Gruver's desk is from the body camera of Marion Police Officer Zach Hudlin. It was filed by Deb Gruver, the Record reporter who'd been looking into Cody's past, who recently left the newspaper. The Associated Press obtained copies of the police department's body camera video through an open records request from a Wichita law firm representing Cody in the federal lawsuit. "It grew into a monster, and it's got your name on it," Cody told Record reporter Phyllis Zorn, who had verified information about Newell online, after reading Zorn her rights, one video shows. But the body camera video shows him repeatedly tellling newspaper staffers that he is investigating how it and Herbel obtained information about the owner of two local restaurants, Kari Newell. The Kansas Bureau of Investigation then took charge of the probe and hasn't said where it stands.Įric Meyer, the Record's editor and publisher, blames the stress of the raids for the death the next day of his 98-year-old mother, Joan Meyer, the paper's co-owner.Ĭody did not respond earlier Monday to an email and telephone message seeking comment about the raids and the newspaper's view of his motives. The local prosecutor later said that there wasn't sufficient evidence to justify the warrants for the raids. The mayor last week suspended Cody from the chief's job indefinitely he's facing one federal lawsuit, and others are expected. The raids put Marion, a town of 1,900 residents some 150 miles (240 kilometers) southwest of Kansas City, at the center of a fierce national debate over press freedoms and cast an international spotlight on Cody and his tactics. "This was all about finding out who our sources were," Bernie Rhodes, the newspaper's attorney, said Monday. But the newspaper and its attorney have suggested he might have been trying to find out what it had learned about his past as a police captain in Kansas City, Missouri. He's briefly seen bending over, apparently to look at the drawer, before the other officer's clipboard blocks the view of what the chief is doing.Ĭody obtained warrants for raids on the newspaper's offices, the home of its publisher and Herbel's home by telling a judge that he had evidence of possible identity theft and other potential crimes tied to the circulation of information about a local restaurant owner's driving record. The AP obtained the body camera video Monday through an open records request.Ĭody then says, "Keep a personal file on me. The video then shows the officer beckoning Cody over to look at the documents he'd found. The public announcement of Cody's resignation was initially reported by the Marion County Record and the Wichita Eagle.Ĭody's departure comes after recently obtained body camera video from the search of the newspaper shows that an officer rifled through a desk drawer of a reporter who was investigating its chief. The mayor also did not respond to a text and phone call about it. The announcement comes days after Cody was suspended for reasons that were not made public, and weeks after a local prosecutor said that there wasn't sufficient evidence to justify the search of the Marion County Record.Ĭody did not immediately return a telephone message seeking comment about his resignation. The police chief who led an August raid on a small weekly newspaper in central Kansas has resigned, just days after he was suspended from his post, a City Council member confirmed Monday.Ĭity Council Member Ruth Herbel confirmed to The Associated Press that the mayor announced Chief Gideon Cody's resignation at Monday's City Council meeting.
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