Talk:Marion, Kansas

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Marion in the News - and it's not good
Marion police conduct an illegal raid on the Marion Record at the behest of a local businesswoman. It leads to the death of the newspaper owner:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/12/police-raid-local-kansas-newspaper-office-and-homes-of-reporters

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/13/marion-county-record-co-owner-joan-meyer-dies-kansas-police-raid

178.197.160.16 (talk) 08:59, 14 August 2023 (UTC)


 * More: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/15/joan-meyer-co-owner-kansas-paper-police-raid.

145.224.97.68 (talk) 17:55, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

Marion County Record a reliable source? Nope.
The Marion County Record is itself used as a source, which, c'mon, they are a party to -- in fact the victim of, apparently -- the event itself. I'm hard pressed to think of a source that could be less reliable. Kau chim sticks maybe. Underwear labels, I don't know. There are living people here, so, no. Any material where there isn't a reliable source has to go -- BLP. I'd do it myself but I've just been cleaning up the section and I'm tired. But BLP requires that it go, if not agreeing please don't war, go to the BLP board, thx. Herostratus (talk) 18:52, 14 August 2023 (UTC)


 * I've removed the citations attributed directly and only to the Record. There are a few details that thus far I think have only appear in their own article on the city council meeting that I think might fall within the use of primary sources guidelines, but I suppose if they have not been reported elsewhere they might not be notable enough to include. Klintron23 (talk) 18:34, 15 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Or rather, I removed statements from the raid sourced to the Record, there might be other statements in the article sourced to the paper. Klintron23 (talk) 18:36, 15 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you. Yeah, a lot of this material is sourced to better sources and it's just a matter of switching to those sources. Which is a pain in the neck, but necessary, so again thanks. I believe the part about the raid killing the old women, for instance, isn't proved, at least not yet. I mean, it probably did I suppose, but we'd need proof.Herostratus (talk) 13:32, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Hmmmm...
I'm not saying the cheif is necessarily the good guy here, but it also seems its not so black and white. So:


 * A vindictive personal enemy of a person had the person's traffic-arrest/traffic-stop/traffic-ticket record given to the local paper.
 * The paper verified the info by pretending to be the person and going to the state's records of such things. Apparently (but maybe not). Which some have claimed would be a crime.
 * The police in the course of investing the alleged crime got a warrant from a judge and per the warrant seized records relating to the alleged crime. That the records were stored by a newspaper rather than a random private citizen enemy of the person might matter a lot, or not. I don't know and I don't know if anybody does, for certain, yet.

It kind of turns on, if I live in Missouri, can I get my neighbor's traffic stop & traffic ticket info on my own dime? Maybe, but seems kind of lax. But if I can't, the reporter (and probably the paper) are in trouble and should be, I guess.

I mean the Associated Press does say here that "The license records are normally confidential under state law, but ... The online user can request their own records but must provide a driver’s license number... The records may also be provided in other instances, such as to lawyers for use in a legal matter; for insurance claim investigations; and for research projects about statistical reports with the caveat that the personal information won’t be disclosed." So, hmmm.

I'm just saying this to point out that we should not rush to judgements here, or imply anything. Our goal is for people reading Wikipedia articles to be completely unable to tell what the opinion of the editors creating the article is. We want to get this done right, not done fast. So in this unsettled case we should probably publish only the most basic info. Later on I think it'd be worthwhile to make a whole article on this incident. Herostratus (talk) 19:11, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Kansas City
On another matter beging pointed out in the section -- altho it's pretty peripheral to the town of Marion and is probably a WP:BLP violation -- is that a police manager got some of his policepeople butt-hurt about him at a previous job.

We don't know why, but we gossip about it anyway here. I suppose to show what a blackguard the chief is, or something. My take is that if you've got a lot of policemen mad at you, it might be because you're cracking down on their grift and corruption (at my grocery store, policemen come after closing and load up carts with free groceries, because what are you going to do about it?), or on their harassing citizens for fun, or treating black people like shit, or sleeping thru their shifts, or being ignorant of basic proper law enforcement rules and best practices, or trying to go on lifetime full-pay disability for sketchy injuries, or forcing the new guys into their toxic little culture, or whatever. We don't know. Since we don't, why are we even talking about it? Are we on a All Cops Are Good kick here, or something?

Not a super big fan of us doing this. Herostratus (talk) 19:20, 21 August 2023 (UTC)