KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Former Kansas City, Kansas Police Department detective Roger Golubski’s death raised a lot of questions, like what’s the status of the nearly $2 million approved to digitize his case files?
The Unified Government of Wyandotte County approved this decision in November 2022, when Wyandotte County District Attorney Mark Dupree requested $1.7 million for the District Attorney’s office to use software to put all 155 of the cases Roger Golubski was involved with in a digital format.
"Any case that has his name on it, this software will allow us to see it and to review it upon being scanned in," Dupree said in a November 2022 press conference.
KCKPD Chief of Police Karl Oakman joined Dupree at the press conference.
"Golubski’s tenure in law enforcement was a moral, ethical and legal failure," Oakman said.
Again, this was in 2022.
"I don’t know if they’ve made a statement around this, and that’s unfortunate," said Khadijah Hardaway, the co-founder of Justice for Wyandotte.
The organization's mission is to empower "survivors and families who are impacted by serious crimes, police misconduct and injustices within our local criminal justice system and government."
A KCKPD spokesperson said the department has reviewed 45 out of the 155 cases Golubski was involved in. There have been 44 cases reviewed and completed and one referred for further investigation.
The review group is made up of three detectives and a captain who are currently assigned four cases as of Wednesday. When cases are referred for further investigation, they're sent to the proper unit.
KCKPD's review of the cases and the DA's office’s digitization are separate, according to the spokesperson.
A question that arose back in 2022 was why is Wyandotte County investigating Wyandotte County?
The KCKPD spokesperson says the review is different than an investigation.
"Somebody gotta pay for what he did," said Ophelia Williams-Pettway, who was part of a lawsuit against Golubski from 2023.
Williams-Pettway says back in 1999, Golubski came to where she lived in Kansas City, Kansas, and served a search warrant for her three sons, who Golubski said were involved in a homicide.
When Golubski asked her sons to come out of the house, she says that’s when he entered and raped her.
She wanted to report him, only there was one problem.
“He told me if I call the police, he said, 'I am the police,'" Williams-Pettway said.
Two of her sons have been in prison for 25 years. The holidays aren’t as festive without them, she says.
“My every waking moment, I’m thinking about my babies,” Williams-Pettway said.
It took her years to muster up the courage to share what Golubski did to her, something testifying during his deprivation of civil rights trial would have allowed her.
"I wanted to tell my story," Williams-Pettway said.
She too questioned the ethics behind Wyandotte County reviewing files from a former Wyandotte County detective.
Both she and Hardaway agreed that the concept of digitization is good, but they have trouble with transparency the Unified Government and other Wyandotte County agencies have shown in the past.
Still, Golubski's death is not enough to hinder their advocacy.
"We all play a role," Hardaway said. "And I just hope that everybody that has been involved, especially those that are feeling it the deepest, would take that feeling and wrap it up and put it in action."
KCKPD says there’s currently no target completion date for their review of Golubski’s files.
The Wyandotte County District Attorney’s Office did not respond to KSHB 41 request for comment about the progress with their digitization.
In the meantime, Williams-Pettway’s paying the price by waiting for her sons’ release, if that day ever comes.
"It would be nice for them to be home," she said.
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