Former reporter settles with police chief who led raid on Kansas newspaper, plans scholarship • Nebraska Examiner

LAWRENCE, Kansas – Deb Gruver was heartbroken and felt violated when police searched the Marion County Record last year.

As a reporter at the newspaper, Gruver knew that the influential people in town were not fans of the responsible journalism she and her colleagues produced. But when police showed up at the office on August 11, 2023, she didn’t know that those officers had planned a terrifying raid that would soon attract national attention.

Gideon Cody, the police chief who led the raid, approached Gruver on the back steps of the newspaper office and snatched the phone from her hand. Officers searched her desk and searched and confiscated the journalists’ computers while she waited outside.

This must not happen, she thought.

“I cried,” Gruver said. “I was pacing, but I cried because it was such an affront to what I’ve known and wanted to do since third grade. I take this profession incredibly seriously. And I take my role as a public servant, which I think journalists are, incredibly seriously. And I just couldn’t believe that this was happening — but yeah, I could believe it because we were where we were.”

It was her mother’s 86th birthday and she couldn’t call her.

“Well, anyway,” said Gruver. “That’s how the day was. And it was hot.”

Settled with the boss

After three weeks of nonstop work, sometimes sleeping in the newsroom, she quit and filed a lawsuit in federal court against Cody, alleging that he had “maliciously and recklessly violated” her constitutional rights to a free press and protection from unlawful search and seizure.

Earlier this month, Gruver and Cody agreed to a $235,000 settlement in their case. The case is being tried against Sheriff Jeff Soyez and District Attorney Joel Ensey, who were also added as defendants. The settlement was covered by the city’s insurance.

In an exclusive interview, Gruver said she plans to use some of the money to fund a journalism scholarship. She also helped friends and family and paid off some debts. An undisclosed amount went to her lawyer, Blake Shuart.

Shuart believes that people focus on the dollar amount, but the real value lies in responsibility.

“I see people making comments on these lawsuits saying, ‘This is just a rip-off’ or ‘This is all about money.’ That misses a point that benefits people whose rights have never been violated before,” Shuart said.

“What you gain from this and what you achieve through it are all the other changes in the discussion and in the politics behind the scenes,” he added.

Gruver said she is still working out the details of the scholarship, but plans to give an annual award of about $5,000 to a first-generation college student in Kansas who has “overcome extraordinary challenges in their life.”

“I don’t really care about grades,” Gruver said.

The raid sparked four other lawsuits, including one from Eric Meyer, editor and publisher of the Marion County Record. Court records show a wide network of local officials involved in the raid, including those seeking to punish the newspaper.

The officers targeted journalists under the pretense that they had committed identity theft by searching a public database for public records. At the suggestion of then-Mayor David Mayfield, who viewed journalists as “the real villains of America,” Cody and his officers worked with Soyez and his deputies to draft search warrants and conduct the raids. Cody sent the search warrants to Ensey, who had an assistant deliver them to Judge Laura Viar, who signed them despite obvious legal flaws.

The police searched the newspaper’s editorial office, the home of city councilor Ruth Herbel and the house where Meyer lived with his 98-year-old mother Joan. She died a day later, partly as a result of the raid.

Soyez hosted a pizza party for the officers after the raid. Cody, who had forgotten to turn off his body camera for the party, told Soyez that “snatching the phone out of Gruver’s hand made my day.”

“I just want you to tell stories”

Gruver started at the Marion County Record in 2022 after seven years away from journalism. She had previously worked at the Wichita Eagle and was happy to report from a newsroom where “there wasn’t a giant TV screen hanging on the newsroom wall, with clicks updating every few seconds.”

Eric Meyer told her, “I just want you to tell stories,” she said.

She said she knew from the first day she attended a city council meeting that local officials wanted to get rid of the newspaper.

“I knew that day,” Gruver said. “I was like, ‘Oh, this is going to be fun.’ I mean, seriously, I was excited. It was like, ‘This is going to be a fun place to report.’ But I mean, it was also exhausting. It was exhausting — because they just didn’t get it.”

Gruver said she met “nice people” while working in Marion, such as Bob Delk, a 101-year-old man from nearby Hillsboro, whose profile won an award.

She likes to talk about her morning meetings with Delk’s “farmer friends” in a restaurant.

“The people who live in Marion County are nice,” Gruver said. “The people who hold public office are not nice.”

This article first appeared in the Kansas Reflectora sister site to the Nebraska Examiner in the States Newsroom network.