If that was the chief’s motivation, it would be an abuse of his office.
Police stage 'chilling' raid on small Kansas newspaper, seizing computers (due to divorce conflict?)
Newspapers are supposed to be hard-hitting, and if that doesn’t generate controversy, it’s usually a sign that you’re not hitting hard enough.
Officials are not supposed to react to being held accountable by trying to silence the citizens who are doing so. As @Northern_Piper says, it’s an abuse of the office – and he should be held to account for it. By the newspaper. and by the courts. And by the rest of the citizens, for that matter.
And the first lawsuit has been filed. A reporter for the paper, Deb Gruver, filed a lawsuit against the police chief.
Update:
Update which was just reported on local Wichita TV newscast:
Police Chief Gideon Cody has submitted his resignation.
Article here:
Gideon Cody, was that the guy Matt, Festus and Newly were going after down Tascosa way?
My guess is that the police chief who resigned will be quietly hired by a neighboring town.
And I would be willing to bet that this doesn’t happen. I would be surprised if he ever is offered another job in law enforcement.
But if it should happen, it won’t happen quietly.
You are too optimistic.
I had a coworker who I had to bail out of jail (and drive six hours each way) because he was driving over 125 mph on I-80 in his brand new Dodge Viper. He was convicted, list his license and got a suspended sentence. He drove without a license (he was a salesperson in a semi-rural area, can’t work without driving) and collected a further couple of convictions. Somehow he avoided jail time.
Imagine my surprise when I got a LinkedIn connection request fifteen years later and found that he was a part time Sheriff’s Deputy in the sane state where he got two driving without a license convictions (or no-contest pleas, not sure which).
Then there was a tightening of regulations on Peace Officers Training and Standards in that state. He was found to be engaged in some corrupt practice (he was selling equipment to his agency from his full time employer) and lost his job in law enforcement.
Sure enough, he’s a sheriff’s deputy in the neighboring state now. The one in which he got a reckless driving conviction. Which very clearly should disqualify him, even it it was expunged.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
If the police want to hire you, there is almost nothing anyone can do to stop them. Whatever standards and regulations are in place are enforced by someone in the brotherhood and can be bypassed with almost complete impunity.
I’ll suggest that the total lack of your friend’s national notoriety had a lot to do with his ongoing success at being first a crappy person and then later a crappy cop for multiple agencies.
And in contrast, I’ll suggest that former-chief Cody’s national notoriety will leave him unemployable in direct government law enforcement. He may well get a job as a bouncer or security guard or other sort of head-buster.
Bingo. No LEO agency will want the certain publicity that would come if he was hired.
OTOH, @Mighty_Mouse may wel have a point that there are an awful lot of one-horse towns and even one-horse counties full of ignorant no-horse losers with 2-bit police or sheriff’s departments who’d be happy to take anyone with a pulse willing to live in that og-foresaken shithole they call “home”.
Easy for us (sub-)urbanites to forget how much of the country is like that. Both in terms of total square mileage, and in terms of total agencies looking for cops.
The negative publicity has a short shelf life. The public seems to have the capacity to be up in arms about 2 to 3 bad police officers/departments at a time. Once another few scandals hit, this whole event will be forgotten on the national stage and the chief will be free to move on to another department.
Problem is there aren’t enough Sherriff Barts to send to all those towns.
I disagree, in that I doubt if he’ll get another LEO job in the state of Kansas, even if it is full of ignorant no-horse losers. Even those folks have access to the internet, and most of them can read.
I hope you’re right, and that he ends up working security at a movie theater. Unfortunately, there just isn’t a watch dog that keeps track of where he is going, so it will take a local in the hypothetical new town remembering the name of the chief, and caring enough to find a reporter that will bother to make it known.
I live in a small town about 30 miles from Marion. If this guy would get hired by our local PD or Sheriff’s department, it would be all over Facebook within the hour.