Two Kansas Democrats say they’ll introduce legislation next session designed to make it more difficult for law enforcement agencies to get a search warrant. The move comes in the wake of the police raid on a small-town newspaper in Marion County. House Minority Leader, Vic Miller and Representative Jason Probst say they’ll propose a bill in January that would require search warrants to be approved by a District Court Judge and not simply by a Magistrate, as District Judges have a stronger background in these kind of decisions. It was a Magistrate Judge that allowed police to raid the Marion County Record, seizing cell phones and computers. The idea is to slow down law enforcement from being able to get a warrant and then move immediately into searching and seizing property without judicial review.
