Jay-Z’s Team Roc urges DOJ to investigate alleged misconduct within KCKPD

Team Roc, the social justice division of JAY-Z’s Roc Nation, on Tuesday called upon the Department of Justice to investigate alleged misconduct by the Kansas City, Kansas, police department.

“We are writing this letter to urge your U.S. Attorney’s office into action but make no mistake: this is more than just a cry for help from the middle of America,” Team Roc wrote in an open letter that ran on its website and as a full-page advertisement in The Washington Post.

The Kansas City, Kansas, Police Department was not able to immediately comment on the ad, but hoped to have a response later in the day, a police spokeswoman said on Tuesday.

The letter comes after Team Roc recently filed a legal action in Wyandotte County District Court seeking the release of investigative files, personnel records and officer misconduct allegations.

Team Roc contends that police officers have abused their authority, fabricated witness statements, planted evidence, concealed officer misconduct and solicited sexual favors from victims and witnesses.

News alerts in your inbox

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

The letter was addressed to United States Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta, who is the third-ranking official at the Department of Justice and supervises multiple litigating divisions including the Civil Rights Division as well as the Office on Violence Against Women and the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services.

“The police and eyewitness reports of criminal behavior perpetrated by members of the Kansas City, Kansas police department, over the past several decades, are staggering,” the letter said. “They detail graphic accounts of rape, murder, sex trafficking and corruption so rampant and so blatant, it would be shocking if even a single allegation were true.”

Team Roc said in its letter that witnesses and evidence available to the FBI from its own multi-year investigation into the department show that many of the allegations are true. Despite that, the Department of Justice “refuses to act,” the letter said.

Christina Sarchio, attorney for Team Roc, said that they have been looking at the issues for the last several weeks and as they learned more and gathered more information, they said it became “increasingly troubling.”

“The decision was made to see if we could bring more attention more immediately to this issue,” Sarchio said.

In the letter, Team Roc wrote that racism and corruption have led to “one of the worst examples of abuse of power in U.S. history.”

“That should come as no surprise to a law enforcement of your stature and experience,” Team Roc said to Gupta. “You better than most understand the ‘blue wall of silence’ will prevent cops from turning on other cops. And asking a state to investigate itself is the quickest way to not discover the truth.”

Team ROC pleaded in the letter for the Justice Department to allow the U.S. Attorney’s Office to investigate.

The organization’s legal filing last month referenced reporting done by The Star’s Melinda Henneberger in which a 45-year-old Natasha Hodge accused now-former KCKPD officer William Saunders of raping her in 1996. A KCKPD spokeswoman told The Star the rape was investigated in 1996, however, no charges were brought.

Included in other examples of officer misconduct was former detective Roger Golubski, who has been accused of rape and was involved in a wrongful conviction that sent Lamonte McIntyre to prison for more than two decades.

Team Roc’s case against KCKPD is still proceeding and it was Sarchio’s understanding that the police department needed additional time to respond to the request for documents.

“Since we have gotten involved in this case, there’s been just a lot of outreach from the community and we learned things frankly that haven’t been very well kept secrets,” she said, including situations previously reported by The Star and other media outlets.

“We just wanted to bring more attention,” she said. “There’s good momentum right now and we wanted to seize that opportunity and really bring a national focus to this local problem.”

English