This whole thing is shitty. The restaurant owner had a DUI years ago, which she was hiding because she really wanted her restaurant to get a (very lucrative) alcohol license. She was also repeatedly driving on a suspended license due to the DUI, something that the the local cops knew and completely ignored. Possibly because the DA's brother owns the hotel the restaurant is in, and once they have an alcohol license he can raise the rent, maybe by an indecent amount. Oh, and multiple people have alleged that the police chief left his previous paid-twice-as-much job in Kansas City due to multiple serious accusations of sexual assault.
The Marion Record had investigated both the DUI and the sexual assault allegations, but had decided not to print either story due to journalistic concerns (they suspected the divorcing husband may have illegally accessed his wife's accounts to send them copies of the DUI information, and none of the people bringing up the police chief's alleged history would go on the record and the KC police personnel department wouldn't give any information either).
Some locals says that the Record is "too aggressive" in it's reporting, while others think that revealing this kind of thing is what newspapers are supposed to do. And in the meantime, the restaurant owner has gotten her liquor license, the hotel owner can (presumably) raise the rent, and the police chief got to keep the newspaper's computers for five days - including (just ever-so-conveniently) the computer that contained the information the paper had on the people who were saying the police chief had left because of the sexual assault allegations. But I'm sure he never tried to find that information in the five days they had the computers because that would've been unethical, wouldn't it ....
The good news is that apparently the newspaper's insurance is going to cover most of the costs of getting their equipment back, and they have a really nice lawsuit they're going to go ahead with. I'm not sure how the lawsuit will go, what with qualified immunity:
Qualified immunity is a judge-made legal protection that shields government officials from claims of unconstitutional conduct. It is a unique and specialized defense available only to government actors and can, if applied, allow those actors to avoid responsibility for constitutional violations.
But who knows? Hopefully the town (the sheriff) and county (the judge) get hit with a really nice large fine, maybe even an actual punishment. There's also a chance that the town/county's insurance won't cover the payout, which will suck for the residents.