When I first heard this news, I thought it must be fake and could not possibly be true.

Turns out I was wrong. Turns out this story was true.

Shockingly true.

I refer, of course, to the story about the police raid on a small, weekly newspaper in Kansas.

All five of the town of Marion’s police force, plus two sheriff’s deputies, got a search warrant and searched the offices of the Marion County Record, as well as the home of its owner and publisher.

They confiscated computers, cell phones, network routers and more, both from the office and the home.

Then the stress of it all got to the publisher’s 98-year-old mother who was the co-owner of the newspaper – and she died the next day.

All of this is true, but also truly unbelievable. But wait, there’s more.

The police were looking for evidence that the newspaper staff had illegally gained information about a restaurant owners’ DWI conviction.

The newspaper publisher said they did not, they got it from an informant and from public records and, besides, they were not going to publish the information anyway.

They did publish a story about a city council meeting where the restaurant owner herself admitted to the DWI – at a public meeting.

Now it is coming out that the police chief may have been upset with the newspaper for some of their stories and coverage of police matters and cases. Those might even have to do with why the chief left his previous job.

Was this some kind of retribution? Or a search for what stories the Marion County Record staff was working on?

Whoa. Have any of these folks in Kansas heard about the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and Freedom of the Press?

Maybe not. But I think they are now. There are a dozen or so newspaper organizations that are criticizing this raid on a newspaper office, and demanding answers. I believe they, and the Record publisher, are planning to sue the city and the police department.

They, and we, believe that it is against state and federal law to seize a newspaper’s computers, story notes, photos, etc., even with a so-called search warrant.

It is possible for a governmental body to go to court and try and get a judge to issue a subpoena for certain specific records. Then, of course, the newspaper will have the right to make its case in court why they don’t believe they should give that information up.

But to come in with all kinds of police officers and search the office and grab any equipment they want, and then do the same thing in the publisher’s home?

Ridiculous. Outrageous. Probably illegal. And, scary.

This raid in Marion, Kansas, smacks of Gestapo tactics, or the way things are in Russia or China or North Korea and other non-democratic countries where there is no freedom of the press.

Newspapers across the country are outraged at what happened on Friday, Aug. 11, in Marion, Kansas. And, well, they should be.

In fact, I wonder if most Americans, who value all of our freedoms, should not be outraged as well.

I try and imagine this happening at the Faribault County Register office. It is hard to do.

The Marion County Record is similar in size to the Register in circulation, population of town and number of employees – just a bit smaller than we are.

This is no big city daily, but a small town weekly publication, covering local news and local issues, including the city council and its police force.

This week, they are trying to publish a newspaper with their computers sitting down at police headquarters. I have trouble imagining us trying to get out the Register without our computers. Sure we have our personal laptops, but they don’t have the programs on them we use for layout and design, or other information.

Want to guess what the Marion County Record’s top of the fold, front page story is probably going to be this week? I know have a good guess.

The nature of the newspaper business is reporting the news, and that does not always sit very well with some folks. They often threaten to cancel ads and subscriptions because they didn’t like what we wrote.

But, the officials in this small town in Kansas took it one big step too far. And they need to be held accountable for it.