Martin Luther King, Jr., reminded us that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” So we are encouraged to be patient, but that can be difficult, perhaps most particularly when it comes to terrorists — as demonstrated once again in the volatile Mideast.
But I digress.
So put into that perspective, seven weeks is not a long time. Nonetheless, it is a longer period of time than it should have taken for the police chief in Marion, Kansas to be suspended.
Gideon Cody and his August 11 raid of a small community newspaper in that small city was the subject of several national news reports and a Saturday morning essay in this space August 19. I subsequently became an online subscriber of the Marion Record and have been following the developments and aftermath. It’s been, of course, interesting.
You may recall that the police chief’s cited reasons for the raid on the newspaper office, the owner’s home and the home of the city’s vice-mayor involved purported identity theft and computer crimes. The publisher was not shy in suggesting that it more likely was triggered by reporter Deb Gruver’s investigations into Cody’s past as a member of the Kansas City Police Department where he had worked before being hired in Marion.
That was confirmed by body-camera footage of the raid, which recorded Cody and another police officer searching Gruver’s desk. When the officer handed Cody a file which contained her investigative notes regarding the chief, it was clear that he’d found what he was looking for.
As other events have unfolded, as tension and accusations dominated the city’s bi-weekly council meetings, the patience of the citizens of Marion was wearing thin. The mayor and at least one council member were busy playing defense — calling it a “coverup” would not be out of line —refusing to even discuss the conduct of the police chief or the issues that led up to the raids during council meetings.
Meanwhile, Gruver filed a federal lawsuit against the chief, the Kansas Bureau of Investigation determined that Cody had been facing dismissal from the Kansas City PD for sexual harassment of a subordinate, and the National Newspaper Association has been peppering Congress in support of the basic constitutional rights that had been violated.
So, seven weeks after the raid, the mayor finally suspended the police chief, who resigned three days later on Oct. 2. While no charges have been filed against him, he will, at least, have to deal with Gruver’s lawsuit and another pledged by the newspaper’s publisher, Eric Meyer.
More recently, Gruver resigned her position, saying she no longer felt safe in Marion. The reporter who took over the city beat, Phyllis Zorn, has now taken a leave of absence for health reasons, as the stress of the situation triggered seizures.
Meyer, who came back to his hometown to take over his parents’ small, weekly newspaper after a career teaching journalism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and editing the Milwaukee Journal, had assembled a veteran, award-winning team of local journalists. He is now covering the city council meetings himself.
Cody will likely sneak out of town at some point, if he hasn’t already; he has yet to answer any inquiries from any reporter. Recall also that Meyer’s 98-year-old mother died suddenly in the aftermath of the raids. She was still actively involved in the business and it was her home that had also been raided.
In this particular case, the arc of the universe is bending toward justice, but it still has a ways to go.
miller@news-banner.com
