Newly released video shows a 98-year-old mother of a Kansas newspaper publisher confronting police officers as they searched her home in a raid that has drawn national scrutiny.
“These Are Hitler Tactics”
On Aug 11, police raided the offices of the Marion County Record, her family’s longtime newspaper, and the home she shared with her son, Record publisher Eric Meyer, over an investigation the paper conducted for a story that it decided not to run.
Joan Meyer spent each of her almost ten decades of life in about a six-block radius of Marion, Kan. She was a worldly woman with an impactful newspaper career, a vigilance with words, a powerful sense of decency, and equally unflinching opinions.
The Kansas police have come under fire after the controversial raid of the Marion County Record newspaper’s co-owners’ home and the paper’s offices.
Security video released by the paper shows an agitated Joan Meyer interacting with law enforcement while searching her home.
She died the next day, following stress over the search contributed to her death, according to Eric Meyer.
The search was over an investigation into an alleged identity theft by Marion County Record reporter Phyllis Zorn, which involved her confirming via a state website that local businessperson Kari Newell’s license was suspended for drunk driving.
As officers rifle through files and seize computer equipment, Joan approaches one of the officers overseeing the search using her walker.
In the video, Joan yells at the police, “Don’t you touch any of that stuff!”
She questions him, “Did your mother love you? Did you love your mother? You’re an a–hole!”
Joan addresses the police chief, “Police chief? You’re the chief? Oh, god. Get out of my house.”
Joan Meyer, whose name is pronounced “Joanne,” didn’t mince words when contacted by The Wichita Eagle for a story.
“These are Hitler tactics, and something has to be done.” Half a day later, she died. Joan Meyer couldn’t sleep Friday night.
Eric Meyer said his mother, whose father once was the town marshal, said, “Where are all the good people who are supposed to stop this from happening?”
“She spent most of the day talking about things like that,” Eric Meyer said.
The raid by the Marion Police Department of the Marion County Record has been condemned by dozens of news organizations, including The New York Times and The Washington Post.
“This shouldn’t happen in America,” the Kansas Press Association’s executive director Emily Bradbury told The Washington Post. “No matter what side of the aisle you’re on, everyone should be concerned [about] government overreach and trying to silence investigative work.”
Many believe that at least parts of this raid were illegal and may have been motivated by reasons other than the alleged identity theft by one of the nespaper’s reporters.
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Well, we’ll never know the true story…. that’s just the way it works. But it probably lies somewhere in the middle.
all these cops do is tell the judge we need a search warrant were the good guys you know and 3/4 of the time these crooked judges give it to them with out just call
The Stress Killed her and the Rabid animals of the Power PO Lice and the Capital Police IE: ANTIFA, BLM, FBI are all rabid animals with a free pass
Its amazing what you moderate and what you dont.