LAWRENCE — 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.
“I cried,” Gruver said. “I was pacing around, but I was crying because it was such an affront to what I’ve known, that I’ve wanted to do since third grade. I take this profession incredibly seriously. And I take my role as a public servant, which I think journalists are, incredibly seriously. And I just couldn’t believe that it was happening — but yeah, I could believe it, because of where we were.”
It was her mom’s 86th birthday, and she couldn’t call her.
“So, anyway,” Gruver said. “That was what that day was like. And, it was hot.”
After three weeks filled with nonstop work, sometimes sleeping in the newsroom, she quit and filed a federal lawsuit against Cody for his “malicious and recklessly indifferent violation” of her constitutional rights to a free press and against unlawful search and seizure.
Earlier this month, Gruver and Cody reached a $235,000 settlement in her case, which will proceed against Sheriff Jeff Soyez and prosecutor Joel Ensey, who were added as defendants. The settlement was covered through the city’s insurance.
In an exclusive interview, Gruver said she plans to start a journalism scholarship with some of the money. She also has helped friends and family and paid off some debt. An undisclosed amount went to her attorney, Blake Shuart.
Shuart said he expects people to fixate on the dollar amount, but the real value is accountability.
“I see people make comments for these lawsuits, and they say, ‘This is a cash grab,’ or, ‘This is all about the money.’ That’s missing a point for people that have never had their own rights stepped on before,” Shuart said.
“What you obtain from it and what you accomplish from it are all those other behind-the-scenes changes in conversation, changes in policies,” he added.
Gruver said she is still working out the details of the scholarship, but she wants an annual award of perhaps $5,000 to go to a first-generation college student in Kansas who has “overcome extraordinary challenges in their life.”
“I don’t really care about grades,” Gruver said.
