Deb Gruver felt heartbroken and violated when police raided the Marion County Record last year.
As a reporter at the newspaper, Gruver knew that powerful people in town weren’t fans of the accountability journalism she and her colleagues produced. But when police rolled up to the office on Aug. 11, 2023, she didn’t know those officials had plotted a chilling raid that would soon seize national attention.
Gideon Cody, the police chief who led the raid, approached Gruver on the back stoop of the newspaper office and ripped her phone from her hand. Officers rifled through her desk, and searched and seized the journalists’ computers, while she waited outside.
This isn’t supposed to happen, she thought.
