*Jay Z’s Team Roc, alongside the Midwest Innocence Project, has filed a lawsuit against Kansas City, Kansas, for allegedly violating public records laws.
The suit claims the city failed to promptly provide law enforcement records related to decades of police abuse and misconduct, NBC News reports. It specifically addresses the Kansas City Police Department’s failure to release important documents about complaints involving current and former officers, following a records request made by Roc Nation in November 2023.
“For decades, communities in Kansas City, Kansas — particularly minority and immigrant communities — have been subjected to an alarming pattern of abuse and other serious misconduct by the KCKPD,” according to the suit, obtained by NBC News.
“Rather than promoting a culture of transparency and accountability, the KCKPD has a long history of turning a blind eye to (at best) and even covering up (if not worse) abusive and/or corrupt conduct by its officers,” the suit adds.
“This filing is because human beings with badges have betrayed the public’s trust … That type of behavior must be held to a standard,” said Team Roc’s managing director, Dania Diaz.
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Diaz stated that the organization has received only three of the sixteen documents requested under the Kansas Open Records Act. The majority of the documents provided are unrelated to their inquiries.
Here’s more from NBC News:
The complaint against the Kansas City Police Department and the Unified Government of Wyandotte County/Kansas City, Kansas, alleges they have “stonewalled” the plaintiffs for almost a year. As part of its request under the Kansas Open Records Act, the plaintiffs said they were initially charged $2,200 in fees, which they agreed to pay.
But to date, according to the plaintiffs, the 225 documents provided are mostly personnel locator records showing officer shifts and assignments and a smaller handful consisting of training materials and department policies. There has not been one document related to “any complaint or investigation into even a single instance of misconduct by any member of the KCKPD,” as requested, the suit says.
In 2022, Team Roc helped initiate an investigation into former Kansas City police detective Roger Golubski, leading to charges against him for federal civil rights violations, including sex crimes against Black women and wrongfully convicting innocent individuals.
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