Rural law enforcement officers often receive little or no support for frequent on-the-job mental trauma

Police answer calls to tragic events such as school shootings, family annihilation, severe child abuse cases and domestic violence crimes. During those calls, victim care is a primary focus but little attention is given to the psychological trauma law enforcement officers may experience as they manage crime scenes, reports Susan Szuch for the Springfield News-Leader, which covers Ozark news.

It's often hard for police to ask for help, particularly in rural communities where suicide rates are higher, but reaching out for care is stigmatized, according to Szuch. If officers ask for mental support or have psychological struggles, they can be deemed unfit for duty.

Michael Mason

The experiences of Michael Mason, a rural police officer and later Police Chief in Humansville, Missouri, a town with roughly 900 residents, serve as an example. Mason had a hard time processing many of the difficult scenes he had to work. In 2023, he attempted suicide. Afterward, he was "given a choice to get help but be fired and lose his Peace Officer Standards and Training certification, or to resign and keep his credentials," Szuch writes. "Mason chose to resign."

Although Mason moved on from his job loss and landed the police chief position in Humansville, he faced similar challenges and had learned not to ask for help. "He took his own life on Dec. 14, 2025," Szuch reports. "He was one of at least 27 law enforcement officers who died by suicide last year."

While laws and attitudes toward psychological care for law enforcement officers have been slow to shift, some changes have been made. "In 2020, the Law Enforcement Suicide Data Collection Act established a data collection program to 'help agencies understand and prevent suicides,'" Szuch explains. "In 2022, the federal Public Safety Officer Support Act changed its definition for line-of-duty deaths to include suicide, which can affect not only the way the death is discussed but how honors are conferred and what benefits survivors receive."

For officers who want someone to talk to, law enforcement leaders stress the "importance of talking to someone who understands a law enforcement officer’s unique situation and experiences," Szuch reports. "CopLine, a hotline for law enforcement officers run by retired law enforcement officers, offers a free, confidential way for them to talk with someone who understands the trauma and pressures of the job." The phone number for CopLine is 1-800-267-5463 (1-800-COPLINE).

Sprawling visa scandal continues to embarrass small towns in Louisiana. Three law officers are among the defendants.

Authorities uncovered the alleged scheme while investigating 
a 'pattern of inconsistencies in U-visa applications.' (HS photo)

Three lawmen, an elected marshal, a Subway shop owner and foreign nationals with cash and a bent for staying in the U.S. allegedly spent nearly a decade manufacturing false police reports of burglaries to help foreign nationals stay in the U.S. 

Most recently, a federal judge "delayed a March trial date and hasn’t set a new one," reports Joe Barrett of The Wall Street Journal. "Locals wish the whole thing would blow over."

Residents from a smattering of small towns in southwestern Louisiana had "endured an 'unusual concentration of armed robberies of people who were not from Louisiana,' then-acting U.S. Attorney Alexander Van Hook said at a news conference last summer."  

"He then delivered the punchline: 'In fact, the armed robberies never took place.'"

How does that happen? It went something like this: The Subway shop owner, Chandrakant 'Lala' Patel, would "allegedly connect with crime 'victims' looking to stay in the U.S.," Barrett writes. "He would then turn to one of the law-enforcement officials to draw up paperwork for crimes that never happened." The foreign nationals, who posed as crime victims, would then apply for U visas, which "allow certain crime victims to remain in the U.S."

Authorities allege the scheme worked for almost a decade and netted the five men $5,000 per foreign national "helped" by the crime reports, which in turn allowed hundreds of foreign nationals to stay in the U.S. based on false claims. Barrett reports, "Investigators with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services spurred the multi-agency probe in July 2024 after uncovering a pattern of inconsistencies in U-visa applications."

Meanwhile, residents in the rural towns of Oakdale, Glenmora and Forest Hill, where the indicted men live or worked, have been shocked by the allegations. Barrett adds, "Months later, locals still talk about the scandal in hushed voices, wary of drawing more attention to their towns."  

Virtual Crisis Care connects rural law enforcement with mental health resources during emergencies

Virtual Crisis Care programs, expanding from South Dakota into Wyoming, are helping law enforcement in rural communities gain on-demand access to mental health professionals to de-escalate emergency situations, reports Madeline de Figueiredo for The Daily Yonder.

Officers connect with the telemedicine network Avel eCare in real-time, effectively helping about 80% of individuals across the country to receive care safely at home rather than being unnecessarily hospitalized or incarcerated, Figueiredo explains.

A clinician from Avel eCare specifically assigned to an individual “conducts a risk evaluation, creates a safety plan, and works with officers on next steps,” Figueiredo reports. Because Virtual Crisis Care isn’t just for an emergency response, these next steps always include connecting the individuals with local community health centers for follow-up care.

This program, funded by the Helmsley Charitable Trust, has been used in South Dakota for over five years by more than 30 rural law enforcement departments. Last year, the program was introduced to the Wyoming Association of Sheriffs and Chiefs of Police (WASCOP), with about 25% of law enforcement agencies participating so far.

“I think if you look at serving in rural America, not only on the criminal side but on the mental health side, you deal with the same people over years and decades. If you can get someone struggling with addiction or mental health into treatment and help them change their life, then we’re not seeing them anymore on the law enforcement side of things,” the executive director of WASCOP, Allen Thompson, told Figueiredo.

Kansas police chief expected to be charged for his role in controversial raid on community newspaper

A police chief who led the controversial raid on a Kansas community newspaper will face a charge of obstructing justice, according to a report by John Hanna of The Associated Press.

Two prosecutors had been investigating the raid at the request of the state attorney general, and they released a report Monday outlining the police chief’s alleged misconduct.

According to Hanna, “Prosecutors Marc Bennett and Barry Wilkerson concluded in their 124-page report that the staff at the Marion County Record committed no crimes before former Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody led a raid on its offices and the home of its publisher. They said police warrants signed by a judge to allow the searches contained inaccurate information from an ‘inadequate investigation’ and that the searches were not legally justified.”

The AP reported that, “Police body camera footage of the 2023 raid on Publisher Eric Meyer’s home shows his 98-year-old mother, Joan Meyer, visibly upset and telling officers, ‘Get out of my house!’ She co-owned the paper, lived with her son and died of a heart attack the next afternoon.”

Hanna wrote, “Prosecutors . . . allege Cody obstructed an official judicial process in the weeks after the raid. He resigned as chief last October.”

Eric Meyer, who will be honored on Oct. 10 at the Institute for Rural Journalism’s Al Smith Awards Dinner in Lexington, Ky., told the AP that “he’s grateful prosecutors found that the newspaper’s staff committed no crimes, though he questioned why it took them a full year. He also expressed frustration that Cody is the only official expected to face criminal prosecution.

“The newspaper’s parent company, Meyer and three current or former staffers have filed federal lawsuits against the city of Marion and current and former local officials, including Cody,” Hanna reported.

One lawsuit over the Marion County newspaper raid settled for $235,000, but more claims are pending

Marion County Record raid, Gruver's desk at bottom right
(Screen capture of surveillance video via Kansas Reflector)

It has been almost a year since the Marion County Record was raided by police supposedly investigating charges of identity theft and illegal use of a computer by the Kansas weekly newspaper. In the process of confiscating newsroom property, the city's chief of police, Gideon Cody, injured Record reporter Deb Gruver's hand while "forcibly obtaining her personal cellphone," reports Emmett Lindner of The New York Times. "Gruver has reached a $235,000 settlement as part of a lawsuit she filed over the search, which set off a national discussion about press freedoms."

Gruver, who resigned from the paper after the raid, "said in a letter to the editor that she 'no longer wanted to work in a town where the majority of leaders clearly don’t respect the Fourth Estate or the U.S. Constitution,” The Record reported.

Another lawsuit, filed by the Record's publisher, Eric Meyer, alleges that the raid, which included "seven law enforcement officials spending more than two hours in Meyer’s residence, where his mother was at the time" contributed to her death the next day, Linder reports. Four other Record employees also have suits pending.

While Gruver's settlement ends one chapter of the raid's fallout, the entire investigation and the later reversal of the authorized searches that allowed it are still more broadly worrisome, particularly for smaller newspapers that investigate local authorities. Linder explains, "Less than a week after the raid, Marion County’s top prosecutor, Joel Ensey, ordered officials to return the seized devices because there was insufficient evidence to justify the searches. . . .The raid also came after The Record had questioned Cody about his departure from the Kansas City Police Department, following accusations that he had made sexist and insulting comments."

The raid didn't just have negative outcomes; there was also a silver lining. Meyer told Linder, "One of the things that we’ve seen out of this is that the people who have responded to us have come from across the political spectrum. There aren’t too many things in this world right now that bring Democrats and Republicans together.”

Uvalde families have filed a $500 million suit against Texas state police just before anniversary of school shooting

Front page of Uvalde Leader-News special
memorial section for Robb Elementary shooting.

On May 24, 2022, Salvador Ramos, 18, killed 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in rural Uvalde, Texas. It was the deadliest shooting at a U.S. school since 2012 when 28 were killed in Sandy Hook, Conn., another small community.

Now, the families of 17 of the 19 fourth-grade children who were shot and killed and two who were wounded have "filed a $500 million federal lawsuit against nearly 100 state police officers who were part of the botched law enforcement response," report Acacia Coronado and Jim Vertuno of The Associated Press. "The lawsuit. . . is the latest of several seeking accountability for the law enforcement response. More than 370 federal, state and local officers converged on the scene, but they waited more than 70 minutes before confronting the shooter."

On the day of the attack, once teachers and students realized an active shooter was in their school, they followed active shooter protocols. The state police did not. "The lawsuit notes that state troopers did not follow their active shooter training or confront the shooter," Coronado and Ventuno write. This federal lawsuit is the first "to be filed after a 600-page Justice Department report was released in January that cataloged 'cascading failures' in training, communication, leadership and technology problems that day."

Earlier this week, the families "agreed to a $2 million settlement with the city, under which city leaders promised higher standards and better training for local police," Coronado and Ventuno write. "Families said the settlement was capped at $2 million because they didn't want to bankrupt the city where they still live. . . . The settlement establishes May 24 as an annual day of remembrance, a permanent memorial in the city plaza, and support for mental health services for the families and the greater Uvalde area."

The $500 million federal lawsuit isn't the only active lawsuit brought by families, nor is it the biggest. "A separate lawsuit was filed by different plaintiffs in December 2022 against local and state police, the city, and other schools and law enforcement, seeking at least $27 billion in class-action status for survivors," AP reports. "And at least two other lawsuits have been filed against Georgia-based gun manufacturer Daniel Defense, which made the AR-style rifle used by the gunman."

Rural sheriff and prosecutor offices in Texas are awarded $125 million to bolster staffing and equipment needs

Map of criminal legal deserts in Texas.
(SMU Dedman School of Law map)

To address law enforcement and prosecutorial staffing and pay shortages, Texas has awarded $125 million to rural offices that need more trained professionals, increased wages and new equipment to serve their communities, reports Carlos Nogueras Ramos of the Texas Tribune. Commenting on the funds, Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar said, "These rural grant programs will help law enforcement offices across this state get the additional financial tools they need."

The grant was made available to communities with populations less than 300,000, and once offered, "94% of eligible sheriff's offices applied for money. Nearly 86% of eligible prosecutor's officers applied, the comptroller said. The comptroller awarded grants to 224 sheriff's offices and 138 prosecutors' offices," Ramos writes. "Rural law enforcement can apply for the grant again in 2025."

In rural Texas, prosecutors' offices have struggled to compete with metro areas to recruit and retain attorneys. "The money is a start to reverse a long-term decline of prosecutors in rural Texas counties, said Pamela Metzger, executive director at the Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law," Ramos reports. "Less than one percent of lawyers practiced criminal defense law in rural parts of Texas."

The lack of attorneys means rural defendants wait longer to see a public defender, which can lead to more time sitting in jail. "Metzger said that an individual accused of a crime in a major city typically has a guaranteed public defender representing them in court within a day." She told Ramos, "If you live anywhere else, you'll have to wait 72 hours or maybe a weekend, just because of where you live."

Reeves County, pop. 14, 800, will
continue to face staffing shortfalls.
(Wikipedia map)

For law enforcement offices, the added funds will help but not solve their staffing woes. Michael Lazcano, a chief deputy at Reeves County, said, "Money is one part of the equation. He said that law enforcement agencies, especially rural ones, will continue to grapple with recruitment," Ramos reports.

A 2022 study by the Department of Justice "found that recruiting has been a persisting challenge for sheriff’s offices. The number of full-time, sworn officers — 174,000 — has not increased since 1997."

Thieves took most print copies of rural weekly with story on alleged rape at police chief's home; increased story's reach

UPDATE, Jan. 20: Mike Wiggins tells the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors, "The thief returned all of the stolen newspapers to our office Thursday night, confessed to the crime and was cited for petty theft this morning." The Plaindealer reports that it is not disclosing the thief's relationship to the sexual-assault case, and "The theft was not connected in any way to the three defendants in the case, their families or the Ouray Police Department."

Front page of the latest Ouray County Plaindealer

By Corey Hutchins
Inside the News in Colorado

This week, a front-page story appeared in the small and mighty Ouray County Plaindealer about a 17-year-old girl’s allegations of being raped by teenagers at the home of a police chief.

What happened next? Papers started disappearing from newspaper boxes around the county, said the paper’s owners, Erin McIntyre and Mike Wiggins.

Here’s more from a note to readers in an email Thursday: "All of our newspaper racks in Ouray and all but one rack in Ridgway were hit by a thief who stole all the newspapers. From what we know so far, it seems this person put in four quarters and took all the papers at these racks. It’s pretty clear that someone didn’t want the community to read the news this week. … Whoever did this does not understand that stealing newspapers doesn’t stop a story. We’re not going to stop doing our job, which is to shine light on important issues in our community and keep you informed. This person is not going to shut down the freedom of the press by stealing a few hundred newspapers. Our community won’t stand for it and we won’t, either."

McIntyre also said the young newspaper publishers were working with a printing plant in Montrose to get another press run published on Thursday. “I'll leave it up to you to draw your own conclusions on which story they didn’t want you to read,” she wrote. Online, a backlash was surging.

When news of the alleged newspaper thefts hit social media Thursday afternoon, Colorado journalists began sharing a link to the online version of the rape allegations story, including an editor at the Colorado Sun, Denver Post staffers, prominent Denver TV anchor Kyle Clark, and others. (The Plaindealer made the story free to read on its website; other stories are not.) The Post ran details of the rape allegations, naming two suspects; the story led with news of the stolen papers.

Ouray County (Wikipedia map)

Clark also included a broadcast segment about it on his "Next" show Thursday evening, indicating the sexual assault story was the news someone was trying to suppress. “We have a link to the article at the Next section of 9News.com,” Clark told his audience Thursday evening. “I recommend you read it if for no other reason [than] that because somebody doesn’t want you to see it.”

If that was the case, the pilfered periodicals produced a classic Streisand effect. The online version prominently displayed mugshots of the three young men arrested for suspected sexual assault, including the Ouray police chief’s stepson; the front-page print story did not.

McIntyre said Friday she hadn’t looked at how much traffic the online story generated, but she said more than $2,000 in donations had flowed in to the newsroom since they publicized the thefts. “People are angry this happened,” she said in a text message Friday morning. “Law enforcement is going to catch this person and we plan on pressing charges.” (She pointed to a 2022 state statute that makes the act of interfering with the lawful distribution of newspapers a finable offense.)

“If you hoped to silence or intimidate us,” Plaindealer co-owner Wiggins said, “you failed miserably.”

Mass-shooting report aims to help police elsewhere; Uvalde still divided; editor has advice for community journalists

Uvalde County (Wikipedia map)

The Justice Department's Thursday report on the massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, is designed to help avoid the mistakes police made, but seems unlikely to heal the divisions that remain in the town of 15,000 and same-named county of 25,000.

“They’re recomending stuff that we already knew,” but “In a lot of smaller towns like Uvalde, police chiefs have to be questioning, ‘What’s in this report?’ . . . Let’s make sure I don’t become that person,” said John Miller, CNN's law-enforcement analyst and former spokesman for the FBI and the New York Police Department.

Miller said a gunman's killing of 19 students and two teachers, and the physical injury of 17 others, was “an incident that was just too big in a place that was just too small.” He said the incdent commander, the school police chief, should have ceded authority to better-equipped agencies. The investigation was requested by then-Mayor Don McLaughlin, a Republican.

Attorney General Merrick Garland, in Uvalde, said “The report concludes that had law-enforcement agencies followed generally accepted practices in an active shooter situation and gone right after the shooter to stop him, lives would have been saved and people would have survived,” rather than letting 77 minutes elapse between their first arrival and their killing of the shooter.

The report was the fullest account yet of the tragedy, but some victims' families said it should have named more names. Andrew McCabe, former FBI deputy director, said on CNN that the purpose of such a "critical indicdent review is not to hold people accountable, but to make a complete statement of facts and say how law enforcement can learn from mistakes."

Victims' families continued to demand action from local District Attorney Christina Miller Busbee, who has said she would wait for the report before taking any action. But they said many of their neighbors want to move on and not "be known as the place with a mass shooting," said Brett Cross, who was a guardian of a child killed in the shooting. "Maybe these people will start taking us seriously." UPDATE, Jan. 19: Sources tell the Austin American-Statesman that a judge has empaneled a grand jury "to consider possible criminal charges against law-enforcement officers. . . . It is unclear what charges the grand jury seated in Uvalde County state district court might consider against the officers, but they possibly include child endangerment or injury to a child, the Statesman confirmed." As for civil suits, in Texas they must be filed within two years of the injury.

Cross told CNN that the Uvalde community remains “very divided,” noting that several officers remain in their positions, some of them elected. “They don’t want to believe that the people grew up with failed our children.” Adam Martinez, father of an injured survivor, told CNN, “If we don’t put pressure, nothing is going to happen. . . . It’s uncomfortable when you have to say people didn’t do their job. . . . You have to go against the grain, and more people have to do that.”

Pedro "Pete" Arredondo, the school police chief, lost his job. In November, "Lt. Mariano Pargas of Uvalde police, who was the acting police chief on the day of the shooting, resigned days before the City Council was set to discuss his termination. He had been placed on leave in July; he stepped down following a CNN report that showed he was told that “eight to nine” children were alive in the classrooms but he failed to coordinate action," the Texas Tribune reported. He was re-elected to the county commission. The Washington Post reported one year after the May 24, 2022, shooting, "The first state police officer disciplined after the massacre was given the option to resign and now works for a local sheriff’s office."

Jan. 21 front page; for a larger version, click on it, or right-click to download.

UPDATE, Jan. 20: The Uvalde Leader-News reports, "On Friday, Jan. 19, a dozen people were selected to serve on a special grand jury that is expected to spend at least six months studying the May 24, 2022, Robb school shooting investigation. About 300 people were summoned to appear at 9 a.m. in the 38th Judicial District Court, and 67 people appeared. Juror turnout has been an ongoing issue for the court. Judge Camile DuBose said in some cases, a mailed summons may fail to reach the intended juror, but some people simply choose not to show up. She said for those who fail to appear, she can summon them to a hearing, where a $100 fine may be imposed on those who have no valid excuse for their failure to appear. For those who don’t show for the hearing, the sheriff’s office may be asked to locate the person and summon them to court."

Julye Keeble of The Leader-News explores possible outcomes: "Police officers are largely difficult to prosecute for inaction, and the law does not require police to risk their lives to protect the public. Per a 2005 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, police officers do not have a constitutional duty to protect others from harm. Few cases against law enforcement for failure to act are presented, and those that are typically fail." Keeble notes the acquittal last year of a school resource officer on charges for failing to protect students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., on Feb. 14, 2018.

"An ongoing debate, particularly seen in the wake of the Robb shooting, is whether police have a moral imperative to take action sooner in mass casualty situations, which often see a delay before an attacker is confronted," Keeble writes. "Though medical findings have not been made public, families allege some of those who died after the attack might have lived if bleeding had been staunched and they received medical treatment. Several Uvalde Police officers who were on the scene within minutes charged forward toward the adjoined classrooms where the attacker was, but were repelled after he fired at them. Two officers were wounded by shrapnel, and though one tried again to move forward, no others would follow. Officers told others the attacker had an AR rifle, and the destructive power of the weapon was likely a factor in guiding police decisions."

Leader-News Publisher Craig Garnett asked Garland at the press conference about the quality of the police response, especially in light of the police response to the mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla., in 2016. That comparison “is not entirely true, and the response was a failure,” said Hugh Clements Jr., director of the Justice Department's Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, which prepared the report.

Garnett's advice to community journalists

For his work on the tragedy and its aftermath, and his first 22 years at the paper, Garnett won the 2023 Tom and Pat Gish Award for courage, integrity and tenacity in rural journalism from the Institute for Rural Journalism at the University of Kentucky, publisher of The Rural Blog. He will receive the award Feb. 29 at the University of Texas-Austin, at a symposium, "Courage, Tenacity, Integrity and Innovation in Rural Journalism." For the audience at the Institute's Al Smith Awards Dinner in October, he had a video message for community journalists, published this week by The Daily Yonder. He said in part:

Craig Garnett

"One of the things we’ve taken away from May 24 is that we didn’t do enough before. We have a wall full of plaques from the South Texas Press Association, the Texas Press Association, but we didn’t do enough. We didn’t ask enough questions. We didn’t hold people running for elected office to account like we should have. We didn’t question people who wanted to run our institutions closely enough. What motivated them? What experience do they have? What would they do in a crisis?

"And we certainly didn’t hold our law enforcement to a high enough standard, the people who swore to protect us. So, we will work harder in the future to do that, to make sure that we know as much as we can about people who intend to lead our community, especially in the aftermath of a tragedy. We want to know how they’ll react. It’s not entirely possible. There are all kinds of things that pop up that you can’t plan for, but you can get a sense of where people’s souls lie and what their commitment is to your community.

"And that’s what I would advise to my fellow publishers in small towns. Pay attention. Pay attention to everything, to those people who run institutions, to the kid who’s slipping between the cracks, who might one day become the same school shooter we had. Be invested beyond what you are now, if that’s possible. I know most of you work your hearts out. But if there’s one thing we would like to do better, it would’ve been that."

Investigative reporting reveals a Mississippi 'Goon Squad,' with a 20 year history of brutality

Six Rankin County deputies, above, all pleaded guilty to
federal and state charges. (Photo by R.V. Solis, AP)

For almost 20 years, the Rankin County Sheriff's Department deputies have run amuck, doling out their own version of crime justice from sticking guns into suspects' mouths to torturing impoverished residents with tasers, reports Brian Howey and Nate Rosenfield of Mississippi Today. "Narcotics detectives and patrol officers, some who called themselves the 'Goon Squad,' barged into homes in the middle of the night, accusing people inside of dealing drugs. Then they handcuffed or held them at gunpoint and tortured them into confessing or providing information, according to dozens of people who say they endured or witnessed the assaults."

Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey claimed that "he was stunned to learn of the 'horrendous crimes' committed by his deputies,'" Howey and Rosenfield report. "But a deep investigation by The New York Times and the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting at Mississippi Today "revealed a history of blatant and brutal incidents stretching back to at least 2004." After records and interviews were scrutinized, "What emerged was a pattern of violence that was neither confined to a small group of deputies nor hidden from department leaders."

The Times and Mississippi Today "identified 20 deputies who were present at one or more of the incidents — many assigned to narcotics or the night-shift patrol," Mississippi Today reports. "Taken together, the reporting shows how Rankin deputies were allowed to operate with impunity while racking up arrests for relatively minor drug infractions and leaving entire neighborhoods in fear of violent raids."

The area Rankin County deputies focused on was ravaged by meth in the early 2000s. "Local sheriffs, even in small departments, set up special narcotics units and joined state and federal task forces in the War on Drugs. The Rankin County Sheriff's Department responded by targeting low-income communities and policing them relentlessly," Howey and Rosenfield write. 

"It's unclear when Rankin County deputies adopted their nickname, but last year, they ordered commemorative coins emblazoned with cartoonish gangsters and the words 'Lt. Middleton's Goon Squad.' Lt. Jeffrey Middleton was the squad's supervisor," Mississippi Today reports. "He is among the five deputies who pleaded guilty to criminal charges stemming from a January raid. . . . A Justice Department investigation this year found that Rankin County deputies chose the name Goon Squad 'because of their willingness to use excessive force and not report it.'"

This article is part of a series by The New York Times' Local Investigations Fellowship examining the power of sheriffs' offices in Mississippi.

Alabama newspaper reporter, publisher arrested and charged with revealing grand jury secrets

A publisher and reporter at an Alabama newspaper have been arrested and accused of illegally disclosing grand jury information about the local school district.

Atmore News Publisher Sherry Digmon and reporter Don Fletcher were arrested on Oct. 27 by deputies from the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office. A Facebook post by the newspaper said that they were released on bonds of $10,000.

According to the post: “The charges against Digmon, also the District 6 representative on the Escambia County Board of Education, and Fletcher stem from an article published in the October 25 edition of Atmore News” about an investigation into “the possible misallocation or misappropriation of federal Covid money paid to seven former school system employees.

“That edition also contained a sidebar article reporting that Digmon’s phone and the phone of District 4 school board member Cindy Jackson had been seized by sheriff’s deputies, who served search warrants against the two, each of whom voted against a new contract for Superintendent of Education Michele McClung.”

Atmore News photo

The Committee to Protect Journalists called on local authorities to drop the charges immediately and investigate why the two were arrested. “They should not be prosecuted for simply doing their jobs and covering a matter of local interest, such as the allocation of school board funds,” said Katherine Jacobsen, CPJ’s U.S. and Canada program coordinator. “Journalists play a crucial role in their local communities. Arresting them creates a chilling effect and is a gross misuse of taxpayer funds.”

The Atmore News also reported that Veronica “Ashley” Fore, the county school system’s payroll and insurance bookkeeper, was arrested on similar charges, though the report stated “the reasons behind Fore’s arrest were not known.”

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, “The charge of revealing grand jury secrets is a felony under Alabama Criminal Code Section 12-16-215, according to court documents reviewed by CPJ, and carries a penalty of between one to three years imprisonment and a fine of up to $5,000.”

In August, police officers raided the offices of the Marion County Record in Kansas and seized computers and other materials such as cell phones, accusing the newspaper of identity theft and unlawful use of a computer. The raid attracted national and international attention and was condemned by many journalists and free press advocates. 

The local county attorney later concluded that there was not enough evidence to warrant the raid, and a judge ordered the materials to be returned to the newspaper. The Record had been investigating the police chief’s employment history at the time of the raid, though police said that reporting was unrelated to their search. The police chief has since resigned his position.

Rural journalists 'knit communities together', have answers for problems in journalism, says USA Today's Susan Page

Susan Page listens to a question as moderator Benjy Hamm, director
of the Institute for Rural Journalism, listens. (Photo by Patti Cross)

"Rural journalism has some of the answers for all sorts of journalism, lessons on covering the news, and earning trust from our readers and viewers," Susan Page of USA Today told 175 people gathered Thursday night for the annual Al Smith Awards Dinner in Lexington, Ky.

"Local news is more trusted than national news," Page noted, citing the latest Gallup poll that found only 7 percent of Americans "have a great deal of trust in what we report and write? . . . Why? You are connected to your communities. You cover the news that matters most to your readers. If you get something wrong, you’re going to hear about it from your next-door neighbor. That really increases the pressure to get things right, and to correct them when you don’t. Those are qualities that every news organization ought to aspire to as well. That’s the lesson of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues."

The institute, which publishes The Rural Blog, holds the dinner with the Bluegrass Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists to present student scholarships and the Al Smith Award for public service through community journalism by Kentuckians, named for the late publisher who co-founded the institute at the University of Kentucky.

"I’m honored to share the stage with the scholarship winners and with Ben Gish and Sam Adams of The Mountain Eagle" in Whitesburg, Ky., said Page, USA Today's Washington Bureau chief. "Congratulations for your coverage, so crucial to your community, of last year’s historic flood in southeastern Kentucky, which cost 45 people their lives."

The dinner also heard video remarks from Craig Garnett, editor-publisher of the Uvalde Leader-News in Texas, winner of the 2023 Tom and Pat Gish Award for courage, integrity and tenacity in rural journalism. He couldn't attend but will receive the award at an event in Texas this winter. Page praised him for "holding to account officials in the aftermath of that terrible school shooting -- well, it takes your breath away. He stood up for those 19 kids and two teachers" who died in May 2022.

Page cited other recent examples of courage in rural journalism: "This summer in Marion, Kansas, my home state, the police chief was so worried about a story that the Marion County Record was working on -- a story about him -- that he got a subpoena and raided their offices. They seized computers and phones in what was a violation of federal law, not to mention the First Amendment. In the aftermath, the police chief has been suspended, and the Marion County Record has gotten its equipment back. And this spring in Idabel, Oklahoma, the McCurtain Gazette-News recorded top county officials discussing wanting to kill one of the newspaper’s reporters while remembering fondly the days when a sheriff could, quote, take a 'black guy, throw him in a cell and beat him.' The sheriff was suspended; the jail administrator was put on leave; one of the county commissioners resigned, and the state attorney general opened an investigation.

"This is what journalists do. This is what journalism does. We also do more. We help readers understand how to file for federal disaster aid after their town is flooded. We track high-school sports. (Does anything attract more readers?) We warn readers when a local bridge has been condemned. We tell them where to go to get the best pizza in town. We knit communities together."

Berkshire Eagle, Seven Days, Vermont Standard, Nantucket paper big rural winners in New England newspaper awards

Slide from awards presentation

The Berkshire Eagle scored big in the New England Newspaper and Press Association awards, which were announced Thursday during the group's semiannual online conference.

The Eagle, of Pittsfield, Mass., was judged the best small daily (less than 9,000 print circulation), with The Keene Sentinel of New Hampshire and the Record Journal of Meriden, Conn., as runners-up. 

The Eagle was judged to have the best editorial, "chastising the Catholic diocese in western Massachusetts for trying to subpoena a reporter's notes which would reveal confidential sources" and calling on legislators to pass a shield law like most other states have to protect reporters. 

And the Eagle won two of NENPA's Publick Occurrences awards, named for America's first newspaper and honoring 13 pieces that were judged to be the best in New England journalism in the past year. The rural or rural-impact winners included the Eagle's reports on nursing homes and hazardous-materials shipments on trains that go through its region; projects by Seven Days of Burlington, Vermont, on child care and the pandemic's impact on housing in the largely rural state; the Lewiston Sun Journal's "Homeless in Maine" series; the Concord Monitor's series on police spending and policies all over New Hampshire; and CT Mirror's "Elder Care Reckoning" series that prompted reforms in Connecticut.

The best small weekly newspaper in New England was judged to be the Vermont Standard of Woodstock, with runners-up the Milton Times of Massachusetts and the St. Albans Messenger of Vermont. The best large weekly (over 4,000 circ.) was the Inquirer and Mirror of Nantucket, Mass.; runners-up were the Martha's Vineyard Times and sister papers in Maine, the Mt. Desert Islander of Bar Harbor the Ellsworth American. The best mid-size daily (circ. 9,000-20,000) was The Day of New London, Conn., with Massachusetts' Daily Hampshire Gazette of Northampton and the Greenfield Recorder runners-up. The Concord Monitor was judged best small Sunday paper.

News-media roundup: Anniston Star shutters combo weekly; writer in CJR assesses case of the Marion County Record

Wikipedia map adapted by The Rural Blog

In recent years, publishers have consolidated weekly newspapers across county lines to keep the operations profitable, but that hasn't worked for The Anniston Star in three nearby communities in northeast Alabama. The daily Star's parent company announced Wednesday that the News Journal, the five-year-old weekly serving Cleburne County and the towns of Jacksonville and Piedmont, in its home Calhoun County, would publish its last edition Oct. 25.

“The decision to discontinue the News Journal was not an easy one,” Star Managing Editor Timothy Cash wrote. “We know that small newspapers are deeply rooted in their communities, with each supporting the other across the decades. We know readers hate to lose that voice. But the ever-changing newspaper industry — which includes many readers’ preference for getting their news online — along with increased printing and distribution costs made Consolidated Publishing rethink its product lineup.” He said the Star would have “events of unique interest to Jacksonville, Piedmont and Cleburne County readers.”

The News Journal is a consolidation of the Cleburne Journal and the Piedmont Journal, founded in 1906 and 1907, and the Jacksonville News, first published in 1936. Jacksonville is home to about 13,000 people and Jacksonville State University; Piedmont has 4,400 people and Cleburne County has about 15,000. Anniston has about 21,500 and Calhoun County has about 115,000.

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"The police raid of Kansas’s Marion County Record looks increasingly like a clear case of official retaliation against a local newspaper," Seth Stern, director of advocacy for the Freedom of the Press Foundation, writes for Columbia Journalism Review. "Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody was allegedly upset that the Record had investigated him. When a local restaurateur accused its journalists of breaking the law, he found a judge willing to approve a search warrant based on a false affidavit, and that was that. But another narrative emerged in the raid’s aftermath: that the Record was asking for trouble through its “aggressive” approach to small-town journalism."

Stein cites stories in The Washington Post and The New York Times, the latter saying the raid had “uncorked a debate” over the question of “What is a newspaper’s role, anyway?” and whether a local paper has a “duty…to be a booster for the places it covers.” He writes, "If that debate is actually happening, it’s not because newspapers like the Record are crossing the line by agitating small-town officials. It’s because those officials have grown unaccustomed to healthy scrutiny. And perhaps some of their constituents have forgotten the benefits of a robust Fourth Estate."

Kansas reporter files federal lawsuit against police chief who confiscated her personal cell phone during raid

Marion County Record raid, reporter Deb Gruver’s desk appears bottom right.
(Record screen capture of surveillance video via Kansas Reflector)

A Kansas reporter says she is standing up for journalists across the country by filing a federal lawsuit against the police chief who confiscated her cellphone as part of a raid on the Marion County Record, reports Josh Funk of The Associated Press. The lawsuit was filed Wednesday. “Deb Gruver believes Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody violated her constitutional rights when he abruptly snatched her personal cellphone out of her hands during a search where officers also seized computers from the Marion County Record’s office, according to the lawsuit. That Aug. 11 search and two others conducted at the homes of the newspaper’s publisher and a City Council member have thrust the town into the center of a debate over the press protections in the First Amendment."

In previous statements, Cody said the search was prompted by a complaint from a local restaurant owner who claimed reporters used illegal means to access her driving record, which included DUI arrest. Gruver’s filing indicates the raid went well beyond the warrant’s scope. “The lawsuit says that the warrant expressly said that the search was supposed to focus only on equipment that was used to access those records, which was done by another reporter at the paper. But after Cody handed Gruver a copy of the warrant and she told him that she needed to call the publisher, he quickly grabbed her personal phone,” Funk writes. “One of the officers even read Gruver, another reporter and an office administrator their Miranda rights before forcing them outside in the heat to watch the three-hour search.”

According to Funk's report, "Legal experts believe the raid on the newspaper violated a federal privacy law or a state law shielding journalists from having to identify sources or turn over unpublished material to law enforcement." While authorities have returned the Record's computers and cellphones, Record Publisher Eric Meyer said it would use a forensic examination "to find out whether law enforcement had accessed or reviewed any of their records." 

Kansas newspaper and police chief disagree over how a journalist obtained documents that led to raid

Wikipedia map, adapted

“The police chief who led the raid of a Kansas newspaper alleged in previously unreleased court documents a reporter either impersonated someone else or lied about her intentions when she obtained the driving records of a local business owner,” according to an Associated Press report.

The records were obtained through a state website. Bernie Rhodes, an attorney representing the Marion County Record, and newspaper reporter Phyllis Zorn deny doing anything illegal.

The AP reported that Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody wrote in an affidavit that “downloading the document involved either impersonating the victim or lying about the reasons the record was being sought.” Zorn said she obtained the information from the website. “Not to my knowledge was anything illegal or wrong,” she said, according to the AP.

Cody led an Aug. 11 raid on the newspaper that seized computers, personal cellphones and a router, according to the AP. The items were released last Wednesday after a prosecutor determined there wasn’t sufficient evidence to justify the seizure.

The raid led to widespread criticism from journalists and news organizations.

According to the AP report, “Some legal experts believe the Aug. 11 raid violates a federal privacy law that protects journalists from having their newsrooms searched.”

UPDATE: The state Revenue Department said Zorn's search was legal, the Kansas City Star reports, quoting spokesman Zach Denney: “As long as the requestor has the required information, this information is public record and available online.” Zorn said her tipster provided that information.

Kansas paper publishes on schedule despite police seizure of computers etc., which attorney and judge get returned

Marion County Record Publisher Eric Meyer talked with journalists after his weekly newspaper hit the stands Wednesday. The subhead reads "but not silenced". (Kansas Reflector photo by Sherman Smith; for a larger version, click on it.)

Screenshot of MarionCountyRecord.com home page

The Marion County Record published its regular weekly edition today, after an all-nighter, and won another victory when the county attorney and a judge told local police who had seized the Kansas newspaper's computers and other materials last Friday to return them.

“I have come to the conclusion that insufficient evidence exists to establish a legally sufficient nexus between this alleged crime and the places searched and the items seized,” said County Attorney Joel Ensley, who had sought the search warrants. “I have submitted a proposed order asking the court to release the evidence seized. I have asked local law enforcement to return the material seized to the owners of the property.” District Judge Ben Sexton signed the order Wednesday morning, and the property was returned to the paper. Publisher Eric Meyer said it would undergo forensic examination "to find out whether law enforcement had accessed or reviewed any of their records."

Ensley said the Kansas Bureau of Investigation would make a report to him, after which he would decide if there was evidence “to support a charge for any offense.” The KBI said it would continue its work without examining any evidence seized last Friday, The Associated Press reports. Ensley also said he would ask the county District Court to release the affidavit that was the basis for the warrants signed by Magistrate Judge Laura Viar, reports Sherman Smith of the Kansas Reflector.

Viar signed the warrants "under the pretense that [Gideon] Cody, the police chief, had reason to believe a newspaper reporter committed identity theft and unlawful use of a computer," Smith reports. "It wasn’t clear what evidence would support such a search warrant, or if Cody and Viar understood the significance of raiding a newsroom." Katherine Jacobsen, program coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists, said at the newspaper office that "She wasn’t aware of any other example of police raiding a newsroom in United States history," the Reflector reports.

The Record has been investigating Cody's employment history, but has not published a story. Meyer told Marisa Kabas of The Handbasket, a Substack newsletter, "The allegations—including the identities of who made the allegations—were on one of the computers that got seized. I may be paranoid that this has anything to do with it, but when people come and seize your computer, you tend to be a little paranoid."

Though his paper was investigating Cody, Meyer told his department about another then-unpublished investigation, of a local restaurateur, that was prompted by a tip Meyer deemed suspicious. When he told the police, they told the restaurateur, who then complained about the paper at a city council meeting, prompting the Record to publish a story. The warrant mentioned the restaurateur and possible identity theft and unlawful use of a computer. Meyer said the paper merely used a state website to get public information.

The day after police raided his office and the home he shared with his 98-year-old mother, she collapsed and died, and Meyer blamed her death on the raids. Joan Meyer had worked 50 years at the paper, where her husband was an award-winning editor for its previous owner and her son was her co-owner for 25 years. Her funeral will be held Saturday.

"Meyer said his mother would be pleased by the outpouring of support the newspaper has received in recent days," Smith reports. "That includes 2,000 new subscriptions for a newspaper that previously had a circulation of about 4,000." Navy veteran Dennis Calvert "drove from Wichita to purchase a six-month subscription" and told Smith, “What the P.D. did here, in my opinion, from what I know, they are ****ing out of line,” Calvert said. “They are totally off the ****ing board. They’ve lost their morals, man. . . . In my opinion, right now, the police chief should be sitting over here in the jail.”

White lawmen in Mississippi plead guilty in case where they tortured black men; lawyer says first such verdict in state

Brett McAlpin, chief investigator for the sheriff's office, got the call
and gave the initial order to investigate. (Photos by Mississippi Today)

Six white former law enforcement officers charged with beating, torturing and sexually abusing two handcuffed black men and shooting one of them pleaded guilty Monday to hindering prosecution, in what appears to be a landmark case in a state with a deep history of racism.

“To my knowledge, never in the history of Mississippi have, in particular, white officers been held to account for brutality against Black victims,” Trent Walker, attorney for Eddie Parker and Michael Jenkins, told Mississippi Today. They were living with, and providing care to, a white woman in Rankin County, which is a destination for many whites leaving Hinds County, to the south.

"Goon Squad" members carried this coin. (Mississippi Today)

The six were "part of a 'Goon Squad' operation aimed at getting African Americans to 'go back' to the predominantly Black city of Jackson . . . nicknamed because of the group’s willingness to beat people up during arrests," Mississippi Today reports. "The officers previously pleaded guilty to multiple federal charges related to the beating, torture, unwarranted search and coverup. Sentencing hearings are set for mid-November." The sentence recommendations range from 80 to 120 years. State sentence recommendations are five to 15 years. The hindering-prosecution charge stems from the officers' attempted cover-up, Michael Goldberg of The Associated Press reports.

Nate Rosenfield, Jerry Mitchell and Brian Howey of Mississippi Today relate the details, starting with: "On the evening of Jan. 24, a white neighbor informed McAlpin that 'several Black males' were living in the home of a white woman in the neighborhood. According to the criminal information, the neighbor claimed he had seen “suspicious behavior” in the home. Without a warrant, they kicked the doors down. The officers shouted orders that the two men complied with, according to the criminal information" filed against the defendants.

Police raid of Kansas weekly was prompted by a tip that didn't result in a story until the target publicly complained

Wikipedia map, adapted

Local law-enforcement officers raided the office of a rural weekly newspaper in Kansas and the home of its publisher and his 98-year-old mother Friday, contributing to her death the next day, the Marion County Record reports, telling its own story.

"The raid is one of several recent cases of local authorities taking aggressive actions against news organizations — some of which are part of a dwindling cohort left in their area to hold governments to account," write Steve Lee Myers and Benjamin Mullin of The New York Times. "Raids of news organizations are exceedingly rare in the United States, with its long history of legal protections for journalists."

The Record, in a town of 1,900 in a county of 11,500, "is uncommonly aggressive for its size," 4,000 circulation, Myers and Mullin report. Publisher Eric Meyer told the Times that the weekly "has stoked the ire of some local leaders for its vigorous reporting on Marion County officials," including the employment history of Police Chief Gideon Cody.

Eric Meyer (Photo by Chase Castor for The New York Times)

The search warrant for the raid mentions restaurateur Kari Newell and cites "potential violations of laws involving identity theft and the illegal use of a computer," the Times reports. After Newell ejected Meyer and reporter Phyllis Zorn from an event with the area's congressman, the paper reported on it, prompting a tip to Zorn that Newell was trying to get her driver's license reinstated from a 2008 DUI charge so she could get a liquor license pending before the state and the Marion City Council. Zorn confirmed the charge via a state website. "Newell said that someone had unlawfully used her identity to obtain private information about her online," the Times reports.

"Meyer decided not to publish a story about the information, and he alerted police to the situation," report Sherman Smith and Sam Bailey of the Kansas Reflector, quoting him: “We thought we were being set up.” Police told Newell, "who then complained at a city council meeting that the newspaper had illegally obtained and disseminated sensitive documents, which isn’t true," the Reflector reports. "Her public comments prompted the newspaper to set the record straight in a story published Thursday." The raid came at 11 a.m. the next day.

"Newell framed the dispute as a straightforward violation of her privacy by the newspaper rather than a First Amendment battle," the Times reports, quoting her: “I firmly believe that this was a vindictive move, full of malice,” which she says was caused by her ejection of the Record from the meeting at her restaurant, John Hanna and Mergery Beck of The Associated Press report. In another story, they report widespread criticism of the raid. Editor & Publisher has a roundup.

Meyer is a former reporter for the old Milwaukee Journal and a retired professor at the University of Illinois, "whose father worked at the newspaper from 1948 until he retired." Meyer bought the paper in 1998 to keep it from being sold to a larger chain, the Reflector reports. He told the Times that much is at stake: “If we don’t fight back, and we don’t win in fighting back, it’s going to silence everybody.”

UPDATE, Aug. 15: Bill Ketter, senior vice president of news for Community Newspaper Holdings Inc., one of the larger chains, wrote a column for CNHI papers in which he says "Anti-press rhetoric has also whiplashed small town America at a time when local newspapers are more needed than ever. They are a cornerstone of rural democracy."

'These are Hitler tactics and something has to be done.'

Meyer pronounced her first name "Joann." 

“These are Hitler tactics and something has to be done.”

Those were some of the last words said by Joan Meyer, 98, a newspaperwoman for 70 years, after police in Marion County, Kansas, raided her son Eric's newspaper and their home Friday, acting on a warrant obtained by a local restaurateur who apparently feared that the Marion County Record was going to publish a story, based on public records, that would keep her from getting a liquor license. The next day, Meyer collapsed and died, after telling journalists that she was upset and stressed by the invasion of her home.

 

"The crux of the police investigation seems to be whether the paper and its reporters committed identity theft and/or unlawful acts concerning computers in confirming Newell’s driving records. An affidavit justifying the warrant is being withheld by County Attorney Joel Ensey, whose brother owns the hotel where Newell has her restaurant," the editorial boards of The Wichita Eagle and the Kansas City Star said in a joint editorial.

"There could very well be more sinister motives in play here, involving the police chief himself. [Gideon] Cody was hired by Marion in April, after taking an early retirement from the Kansas City, Missouri, Police Department, where he was a captain. According to Eric Meyer, the Record has been actively investigating the circumstances surrounding Cody’s departure from the KCMO department. Friday’s raid gives Cody and his subordinates access to reporters’ notes and materials from confidential sources who were interviewed as part of the newspaper’s investigation." Cody told The New York Times, “I believe when the rest of the story is available to the public, the judicial system that is being questioned will be vindicated,” but declined to discuss details.

UPDATE, Aug. 15: The Associated Press reports, Cody referred questions Monday to the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, saying it was leading the investigation. The state agency, in turn, refused to say it had taken over the investigation, referring instead to a statement saying it had “joined” the investigation and seemed to try to distance itself from the raids."

The Kansas City and Wichita newspapers say Magistrate Laura Viar, "or the presiding district judge, should immediately revoke the overly broad search warrant she signed and declare that any evidence seized under it be inadmissible in court. Viar or the district judge should order the immediate return of all equipment and materials seized." We agree. --Al Cross, professor and director, Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, University of Kentucky

UPDATE, Aug. 15: Bill Ketter, senior vice president of news for Community Newspaper Holdings Inc., one of the larger chains, wrote a column for CNHI papers in which he says "Anti-press rhetoric has also whiplashed small town America at a time when local newspapers are more needed than ever. They are a cornerstone of rural democracy."

UPDATE, Aug, 16: The Times honors Joan Meyer with an obituary.