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Last Friday, five Black women filed a federal lawsuit against several police chiefs and detectives as well as the local government in Kansas City, Kansas, alleging that those officers have been allowed to beat, rape and otherwise abuse members of the Black community for decades with impunity. Four out of the five plaintiffs in the suit claim they were raped by a former detective who is, as of last year, facing criminal charges for conspiring to run an underage sex trafficking ring, and the sexual assault of one of the plaintiffs and a teenage girl.
“With government authority, a plague of State agents used their badges as licenses to stalk, assault, beat, rape, harass, frame, and threaten Black citizens in protected police hunting grounds” the federal lawsuit filed on behalf of Michelle Houcks, Saundra Newsom, Niko Quinn, Ophelia Williams, and Richelle Miller. Roger Golubski—the former detective who is already charged with Williams’ alleged assault as well as holding underage girls in “involuntary servitude” and “forcing them to provide sexual services”—is the subject of many of the allegations. In fact, four of the five plaintiffs in the suit have claimed to have been raped by Golubski, according to HuffPost.
The suit specifically accuses the Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City of providing a “protection racket” for officers of the Kansas City, Kansas, Police Department, who have allegedly been violently abusing the Black community in Kansas City since the ’80s.
From HuffPost:
The defendants listed in the suit include former police chiefs Thomas Dailey, James Swafford and Ronald Miller; and detectives Roger Golubski, Terry Zeigler, Michael Kill, Clayton Bye and Dennis Ware.
The suit likens the police department’s and city/county government’s efforts to torment and intimidate Black citizens to the Jim Crow era of the late 1800s to the mid-1900s when racist laws upheld white supremacy and enforced segregation.
The suit describes the officers as “dirty cops” who used their “badges to exploit Black women” and used “government-sanctioned power and terrorism” to silence and intimidate the plaintiffs.
The suit describes multiple encounters with Golubski, a former homicide detective in the KCKPD who retired in 2010. Golubski, now 70, has made headlines in the last few years as misconduct accusations against him, spanning from the 1990s to the 2000s, have surfaced.
If the expression, “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire” holds true, Golubski is an active volcano. The 70-year-old is accused of crimes dating back to the early ’90s that are so horrific, racist, violent, depraved and corrupt it’s a wonder that he has not only managed to avoid prison but held onto his badge until he retired more than a decade ago. (Actually, it’s only surprising if you believe the “only a few bad apples” narrative and are unfamiliar with the historically racist system of policing in America.)
More from HuffPost:
One federal case alleges that he raped and kidnapped two women during his police work. According to the indictment, Golubski allegedly told one of his victims that he could help her after her twin sons were arrested for a double murder in 1999, KCUR-FM in Kansas City reported. Instead, the suit alleges, Golubski returned to her home and raped her multiple times.
When the woman told Golubski that she would report him, he allegedly said, “Report me to who, the police? I am the police.”
A second federal indictment accuses him of collaborating with drug dealers to run a sex trafficking ring involving minors in the 1990s.
The lawsuit filed Friday includes allegations that Golubski used his influence as an officer to wrongfully convict Black men of crimes they didn’t commit, citing the allegedly framing a 16-year-old in a double homicide in 1994, which led to a 23-year prison sentence. The teen was exonerated in 2022 and received a $12.5 million settlement from Kansas City and Wyandotte County.
Golubski, who has pleaded not guilty to all of the charges against him, was on house arrest pending trial until he was hospitalized last month due to unspecified health concerns, KCTV-TV reported.
The cases against Golubski and other Kansas City officers are eerily similar to a recent case in Mississippi where six former Braxton police officers pleaded guilty after they were accused of entering the home of two Black men without a warrant and handcuffing the men, whom they tortured with sex toys, stun guns and regular guns, which one cop used to shoot one of the men in the mouth—all because one cop told other cops the Black men were living with a white woman.
This is the danger presented by racists and abusers who are in positions of power and authority.
SEE ALSO:
Mississippi Welfare Scandal: Brett Favre’s Defamation Lawsuit Against Shannon Sharpe Dismissed
‘Ruined My Life’: Dallas Black Man Beaten And Tased By Police After Mistaken Identity, Says Lawsuit
