Originally published at: After police raid Kansas newspaper, its co-owner "collapsed and died" | Boing Boing
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The judge that signed off on this fishing expedition should wear this debacle. This is a request to search newspaper offices - not a known crack house. If I were a judge and the PoPo asked me to approve a warrant against journalists… you bet your bippy I would think long and hard about the request, make damn sure there’s a legit foundation for the submission.
What is crazy about all this… the restaurant lady complained about some oddly specific violations against her, and the police were able to get a warrant based on her opinion as to what laws were broken. The complainant had a very specific (but questionable) charge, and the cops went with exactly that. almost like SHE dictated what the search warrant was about.
So Karen goes around town telling the cops what to do and who to do it to. Lovely.
As they say… “But wait, there’s more!!”
“When the newspaper asked for a copy of the probable cause affidavit required by law to issue a search warrant, the district court issued a signed statement saying no such affidavit was on file, the Record reported.”
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This is both tragic & chilling. Thank you for drawing attention to it.
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IMO:
No paperwork means no warrant.
No warrant means no qualified immunity.
No qualified immunity means criminal charges of theft, trespassing, assault, and potentially more offenses for the people that raised the newspaper.
Right?
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I like your optimism, but I can’t really believe the consequences will be all that dire for the cops.
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Aaand restaurateur Kari Newell has just Streisanded her way into even far-away doofuses like me knowing about her drunk driving.
Also: There’s no ‘n’ in ‘restaurateur.’
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See also:
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I keep thinking about how prosecutors will charge everyone involved in a crime with “murder” if someone dies as a result. E.g. guy drives some friends somewhere, they commit a robbery there, cops show up and fatally shoot one of the robbers, car driver gets charged with murder (and yes, such absurd examples exist in the real world). Charging the cops with murder would be about the only way they’d feel some consequences.
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This is a very odd fact which I now know. Thank you.
I’ll file that away with the fact that Kari Newell is a drunk driver.
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… that’s “convicted drunk driver Kari Newell”
Don’t let search engines forget it 
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Yeah. Fired is fired; but until they actually lose their license to “Peace” (of all the inane names for the license a modern cop needs to be employed), they just skip on to the next town, state, city; whatever.
Gawd forbid a citizen should ever even try to move around with even a tiny grievance of the courts.
Cop = license to Nazi (verb)
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I was just listening to exactly that story on the Law & Disorder podcast. Cops murder a kid picked up for robbery & then charge his friends with the killing. Guess who’s in prison now for murder?
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It’s crazy, I’ve read of multiple cases like this in the US, and apparently there’s some similar laws in the UK that have led to equally absurd situations there. In the US we have the added wrinkle that the cops are highly likely to be the ones responsible for the death, so cops not only get to dodge responsibility for unjustified killings, but blame someone else, too.
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