Video footage has been released of Joan Meyer, the 98-year-old Kansas newspaper owner who died a day after having her home raided by police, yelling at and cussing out officers as they pawed through her personal items.

(Video Credit: Kansas City Star)

Meyer called one officer an a**hole during the raid and then asked if his mother loved him. She snapped at and berated the officer during the search just a day before she died from cardiac arrest.  Six officers raided her home while she repeatedly screamed at them to get out, according to the Daily Mail.

“I don’t want you in my house,” she told the officers.

She reportedly refused to eat, sleep, or drink following the raid and passed away on August 12, according to a coroner’s report.

The raid took place on August 11 after a search warrant was executed by the Marion County Police Department during an identity theft investigation. That probe was later withdrawn by the county attorney but not before Meyer died.

Owner of Kansas newspaper cries foul over police raid after report on local businesswoman https://t.co/GKJorccE3h via @americanwire_

— Bo Snerdley (@BoSnerdley) August 13, 2023

Joel Ensey, who is the Marion County Attorney, ruled earlier in August that there was “insufficient evidence” to justify a search warrant being issued in the first place.

“Don’t you touch any of that stuff,” the Marion County Record co-owner yelled at officers in the footage as she shuffled around her small home with a walker. “This is my house. You a**hole!”

The woman’s son, Eric Meyer, is blaming the raid for his mother’s death, claiming she was “traumatized” by it according to the Daily Mail.

The investigation was reportedly triggered in connection to a story that the newspaper was looking into that asserted Police Chief Gideon Cody retired from his previous job to avoid punishment over alleged sexual misconduct charges.

Video shows Kansas newspaper owner Joan Meyer yelling at police as they search her home https://t.co/bbOvxjzaOo pic.twitter.com/qOC5eoPyO0

— Daily Mail US (@DailyMail) August 22, 2023

Eric Meyer believes the raid was connected to Cody’s sexual misconduct allegations.

“I may be paranoid that this has anything to do with it, but when people come and seize your computer, you tend to be a little paranoid,” Meyer told The Handbasket in an interview.

“We didn’t publish it because we couldn’t nail it down to the point that we thought it was ready for publication,” Meyer asserted. “[Cody] didn’t know who our sources were. He does now.”

“This is the type of stuff that, you know, Vladimir Putin does, that Third World dictators do,” he told the Associated Press. “This is Gestapo tactics from World War II.”

Today’s funeral for Joan Meyer, the co-owner of the Marion County Record, was a testament to the impact she had on her community.

She was remembered for her historical knowledge of Marion, her work at the paper, and her belief that people, if informed, would do the right thing. pic.twitter.com/sPejzT8PWt

— Katherine Jacobsen (@kajtweets) August 19, 2023

Aside from Meyer’s home, the newspaper’s office was raided as well as the home of one of its reporters. Publishing equipment, computers, and phones were seized.

The Marion County Record released the video footage.

“Did your mother ever love you?” Meyer asked the officer in the video, which went viral with more than 23,000 views in a matter of hours.

“Get out of my house. You’re trespassing,” she angrily told the police officer.

Two officers tried to calm Meyers down while the other four kept searching.

Just before she died, Joan Meyer, a newspaperwoman since 1953, said this about the police raid on her Kansas home: “These are Hitler tactics and something has to be done.” https://t.co/zFHmgxvouS

— Justine Medina (@jnmedina8989) August 22, 2023

When she was asked how many computers she had, she told the officer, “I’m not going to tell you.”

“I want to see what they’re doing,” Meyer says as she moved with her walker among the officers.

The raids were instigated after leaked documents about local restaurateur Kari Newell were handed to the newspaper. Eric Meyer didn’t publish the story about Newell because he questioned the source of the leak. Instead, he gave the information to the police.

Newell proceeded to accuse the newspaper of illegally obtaining her personal data, prompting the searches.

Shocked by the unsettling police raid at the home of Kansas newspaper owner, Eric Meyer. Video evidence unveils a deeply troubling encounter, particularly involving the 98-year-old co-publisher, which had heartbreaking consequences. With the warrant’s validity in question, signed…

— Billy Snider (@sniderstyle) August 21, 2023

She was also unhappy that the newspaper had reported that Newell kicked out reporters from an event at her restaurant.

Meyer told the Kansas City Star in an interview, “We sent them a note saying that a source had given us a file that we thought had suspicious origins. We checked it out to verify that it was accurate, but were not planning to do anything with it. Their response was the typical fashion of a bully.”

“Instead of asking a question or getting material, they came with an atomic flyswatter to seize our equipment and apparently tried to put us out of business,” Meyer contended, referring to the police raids.

On Wednesday, the paper’s front page read, “Seized…but not silenced.”

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