It sounds like a story you’d hear out of some totalitarian regime: The police storm a newsroom, threaten journalists and make off with newsroom documents.

Unfortunately it happened in Virginia. Ironically, at a university named for James Madison, the Father of the Constitution and author of the First Amendment.

Rockingham County Commonwealth Attorney Marsha Garst and 10 police officers raided the newsroom of The Breeze, the student newspaper at James Madison University demanding pictures of an off-campus riot April 10. Editor Katie Thisdell the Breeze’s editor, had earlier told Garst that the only pictures the paper would release were the ones that had already been published, and she pointed out the police took their own pictures instead.

Instead of getting a subpoena, which the paper could move to quash, Garsh obtained a search warrant and came down with a police goon squad to execute it. When Thisdell objected, Garst threatened to take the newspaper’s equipment. In the end, the paper turned over 900 pictures.

Since then, the Student Press Law Center has stepped in to represent the student journalists, and an agreement was struck that the pictures are in the hands of a third party while the legal issues are sorted out.

Frank LaMonte, SPLC’s executive director, said the raid likely violated the federal Privacy Protection Act, which makes it illegal to search newsrooms without first getting a subpoena.

Instead, we get Garst using tactics better suited to Nazi Germany than the United States, where the press is considered a watchdog on  government and not an investigative branch of the police department.

Ideally, Garst should drop the demand immediately, return the photos and any copies she has made of them, and then she and the police chief both need to issue formal, public apologies for trampling on basic human rights.

Thanks to The Roanoke Times for the heads-up.

Student journalists at Missouri Southern State University are finding it a bit harder to get to their usual sources.

The university began enforcing a 2008 policy requiring all media questions go through Rodney Surber, the university relations director. Surber will also set up interviews between university employees and reporters. Reporters can interview faculty, but the faculty members must report the conversation to Surber.

The Student Press Law Center reports that the crackdown began after staffers at the Chart, the student newspaper, requested the university president’s business e-mail messages. Coincidence? Probably not.

Universities should be about the quest for truth, regardless of where it leads. This policy is more about image control and spin, which is antithetical to that academic mission. We want to see student journalists come out of college able to seek truth and report it, as well as speak truth to power and not just settle for reprinting press releases or working with bureaucratic minders.