Police secretly copied the data that they took from the Marion County Record and then kept it while pretending to hand back the evidence they took, The Kansas Reflector reported citing court filings.
The court filing revealed that among the things listed in the evidence list was the revelation of one extra item: a USB drive revealed as OS Triage Digital DATA. The data copied was about 17 gigabytes.
Screen capture of evidence list from the 8th District Court records.
It's visible on a property receipt released by the 8th District Court, but the paper's lawyer, Bernie Rhodes, said that it wasn't among the items returned to the paper. The objects the police were required to hand back were all taken during a raid by local police on Aug. 11.
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The ordeal began when the local police made a claim that the newspaper had illegally obtained information from a government website and that the material violated the Drivers’ Privacy Protection Act of 1994. They then asked the Kansas Bureau of Investigation to agree to their warrant. A local judge, with her own political issues, approved it and the raid was on.
It turns out that the tip prompted a reporter to use a public website that verifies driver's licenses on the Kansas Department of Revenue website. Still, both the local police and the KBI claimed the investigation was linked to the "illegal access and dissemination of confidential criminal justice information."
The co-owner, Eric Meyer, believed that it was politically motivated after they turned over the information given to them by a source that said a local business owner was driving without a license. He said that the paper was also investigating Police Chief Gideon Cody and the conditions under which he left his previous job in Kansas City, Missouri.
Among the things discovered were three affidavits that the police used to get the warrant. Those affidavits weren't filed with the 8th Judicial District until after the raid had already taken place, reported KWCH last week.
On August 16, Marion County Attorney Joel Ensey withdrew the search warrant, saying that the local police didn't have the evidence necessary to seize the items. The move came after international attention to the story.
Rhodes wrote in his letter to the court: “The apparent alteration of the inventory list raises serious questions." He identified the extra item as the USB drive and its manufacturer and said it appeared someone used the drive to "clone" the data that they obtained from the newspaper.
“Because that drive is still in the Sheriff’s Office’s custody, that means the Sheriff still has access to the Marion County Record’s data—data that is both constitutionally protected and protected by federal and state law,” Rhodes wrote.
He is requesting the police along with Sheriff Jeff Soyez be held in contempt of court.
Meyer's mother, Joan, the other co-owner of the paper, died the day after the raid. He thinks that it was related to what happened and is suing for wrongful death.
"She collapsed a day after the police raided her home and the offices of" her paper, her obituary says.
