Eric Meyer, publisher of the Marion County Record, talks to one of his reporters in the weekly newspaper's newsroom, Monday, Aug. 21, 2023, in Marion, Kansas. Local police raided the newspaper Aug. 11, seizing computers and cellphones, and some of the equipment has been returned.

MARION, Kan. — The initial online search of a state website that led a central Kansas police chief to raid a local weekly newspaper was legal, a spokesperson for the agency that maintains the site said Monday, Aug. 21, as newly released video showed the publisher’s 98-year-old mother protesting a search of their home.

The raids on the Marion County Record and the publisher’s home happened earlier this month, after a local restaurant owner accused the newspaper of illegally accessing information about her. A prosecutor said later that there was insufficient evidence to justify the raids, and some of the seized computers and cellphones have been returned.

But video released by the newspaper shows just how upsetting the raid was to the mother of publisher Eric Meyer. The woman died the next day.

“Get out of my house … I don’t want you in my house,” Joan Meyer shouted at the six officers who were in the home she shared with her son.

The surveillance video shows Meyer using a walker and dressed in slippers and a long robe or gown as she approaches the officers, swearing at them and demanding to know what they are doing.

She yells: “Don’t you touch any of that stuff.”

The raid on the Record put it and its hometown of about 1,900 residents in the center of a debate about press freedoms protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and Kansas’ Bill of Rights. It also exposed divisions in the town over local politics and the newspaper’s coverage of the community and put an intense spotlight on Police Chief Gideon Cody, who led the Aug. 11 raids months after the newspaper had asked questions about his background.

“As far as Chief Cody goes, he can take his high horse he brought into this community and giddy-up on out of town,” Darvin Markley, a Marion resident, said during an Aug. 21 city council meeting. “The man needs to go. He needs to be fired.”

Cody did not attend the meeting or respond to email and cellphone messages seeking responses to those comments. He said in affidavits used to obtain the warrants that he had probable cause to believe the newspaper and a city council member whose home was also raided had violated state laws against identity theft or computer crimes.

Both city council member Ruth Herbel and the newspaper have said they received a copy of a document about the status of the restaurant owner’s license without soliciting it. The document disclosed the restaurant’s license number and her date of birth, which are required to check the status of a person’s license online and gain access to a more complete driving record. The police chief maintains they broke state laws to do that, while the newspaper and Herbel’s attorneys say they didn’t.

Herbel, the city’s vice mayor, presided over the city council meeting, its first since the raids. It lasted less than an hour, and Herbel announced that council members would not discuss the raids — something its agenda already had said in an all-caps statement in red followed by 47 exclamation points. She said the council will address the raids in a future meeting.

While Herbel said after the meeting that she agrees that Cody should resign, other city council members declined to comment. Mike Powers, a retired district court judge who is the only candidate for mayor this fall, said it’s premature to make any judgments.

The meeting came after Kansas Department of Revenue spokesperson Zack Denney said it’s legal to access the driver’s license database online to check the status of a person’s license using information obtained independently. The department’s Division of Vehicles issues licenses.

“The website is public-facing, and anyone can use it,” he said.

The Department of Revenue website allows a searcher to see whether a person has a valid driver’s license and to see a list of documents related to that person’s driving record.

Searchers can go further: The site allows them to download documents or buy a copy of a driving record for $16.70. But they also need a person’s driver’s license number and date of birth, and they are asked to provide an address and phone number.

The affidavit to search the newspaper’s offices noted that when a person submits an online request for someone’s driving record, it lists 13 circumstances in which it is legal to obtain it. They include a person is seeking their own record or a business seeking it to verify personal information to help collect a debt.

The last item says: “I will use the information requested in a manner that is specifically authorized by Kansas law and is related to the operation of a motor vehicle or public safety.”

Meyer, the newspaper’s publisher, said Aug. 21 that reporter Phyllis Zorn did not download or purchase any documents when at the site. He said the newspaper plans to file a lawsuit over the raid of its offices and his home.

“If they thought they were intimidating us, they were wrong,” said Meyer, who blames the stress of the raid for his mother’s death.

‘T. rexes’ race to photo finish at Washington state track

AUBURN, Wash. — A track for live horse racing in suburban Seattle turned prehistoric over the weekend as more than 200 people ran down the track cloaked in inflatable Tyrannosaurus rex dinosaur costumes.

The 2023 T-Rex World Championships at Emerald Downs — an event that started in 2017 as a pest control company’s team-building activity — ended in a photo finish on Sunday, Aug. 20, with three competitors hitting the finish line together.

Ocean Kim took top honors in the 100-yard dash after officials agreed Kim, of Kailua, Hawaii, hit the finish wire just ahead of the pack. Second place went to Colton Winegar, of Boise, Idaho, who entered as Deno the Dino. Seth Hirschi, of Renton, Washington, as Rex Ray Machine, finished in third.

The actual T. rex roamed the planet between 65 million and 67 million years ago. A study published two years ago in the journal Science estimated that about 2.5 billion of the dinosaurs ever lived. Hollywood movies such as the “Jurassic Park” franchise have added to the public fascination with the carnivorous creature.

A power outage in New Jersey was due to an unlikely culprit: a fish

SAYREVILLE, N.J. — A power outage that cut electricity to a New Jersey community a week ago was due to an unlikely culprit — a fish that was apparently dropped by a bird and landed on a transformer, officials said.

Sayreville police said Jersey Central Power and Light Company workers working on the Aug. 12 outage that cut power to a large area of Lower Sayreville found a fish on the transformer in the New Jersey community southwest of New York’s Staten Island.

“We are guessing a bird dropped it as it flew over,” police said on their Facebook page. In a later post, they had a bit of fun, asking readers to remember the fish as “the victim in this senseless death,” dubbing him “Gilligan” and calling him “a hard working family man” and “a father to thousands.”

The suspect, they said, “was last seen flying south” — and readers were urged not to try to apprehend him because “although he isn’t believed to be armed he may still be very dangerous.”

Jersey Central Power and Light Company spokesperson Chris Hoenig said animals — usually squirrels — are a common cause of power outages but “fish are not on the list of frequent offenders.” He said an osprey was probably to blame for the outage that affected about 2,100 Sayreville customers for less than two hours.

Hoenig said the Sayreville area has a large presence of ospreys, which were on the state’s endangered species list until less than a decade ago. The company has a very active osprey and raptor protection program that includes surveys and monitoring of nests and relocating nests that are on their equipment or too close to power lines, he said.

Hoenig told CNN the company appreciates the patience of customers during the outage — but also has sympathy for the suspected avian that lost its lunch.

“If you’ve ever dropped your ice cream cone at the fair, you know the feeling,” he said.