Retired detective and Kansas City drug kingpin charged with conspiring to run an underage sex-trafficking operation

By Scott Glover and Daniel A. Medina, CNN

A veteran homicide detective in Kansas City, Kansas conspired with a local drug kingpin to help run a sex-trafficking operation involving underage girls, prosecutors alleged in an explosive indictment unsealed Monday.

Roger Golubski, a retired 35-year-veteran of the Kansas City, Kansas Police Department allegedly used his position to shield the operation from law enforcement investigations, according to the three-count indictment filed in U.S. District Court in Topeka. Golubski entered a plea of not guilty, said his attorney, Chris Joseph.

“Roger maintains his innocence and looks forward to clearing his name from these decades-old and uncorroborated allegations,” Joseph said in an email to CNN.

The sex trafficking operation, which was run out of an apartment complex in the 1990s by a local crack dealer named Cecil Brooks and two other men, victimized girls as young as 13, according to prosecutors.

In exchange for his protection, Golubski collected cash from Brooks and was allowed to “choose girls to provide him sexual services,” the indictment alleges.

Golubski, who retired from the police department in 2010, was charged in September with sexually assaulting a woman and a teenage girl two decades ago “while acting under color of law,” meaning he used his position as a police officer to commit the crimes. He has pleaded not guilty to those charges as well.

As he awaited trial under home confinement in that case, prosecutors unveiled a second indictment on Monday charging him with “conspiracy against rights” and two counts of “involuntary servitude” in connection with the alleged sex trafficking ring. Both cases stem from a years-long grand jury probe first reported by CNN last year.

According to Monday’s indictment, Brooks recruited “young girls who were runaways” or came from broken homes and kept them locked in a room at an apartment complex where he and co-defendants LeMark Roberson and Richard “Bone” Robinson used threats and physical beatings to force them to engage in sex acts. The indictment refers to two unidentified victims who allege they were held captive and forced into sex.

One of the victims told authorities she was just 16 years old when Golubski pulled her hair, choked her and raped her.

It was not immediately clear whether Golubski’s co-defendants appeared in court and, if so, how they pleaded to the charges. None were immediately available for comment.

Golubski first came under public scrutiny in 2016 for his work in the double murder conviction of a man named Lamonte McIntyre. McIntyre, who had served 23 years in prison, was freed in 2017 when the district attorney for Wyandotte County, which includes Kansas City, Kansas, concluded he no longer had faith in the conviction and asked a judge to dismiss the case.

Following his release, McIntyre and his mother filed a civil lawsuit in federal court against multiple officers involved in his arrest, taking particular aim at Golubski. The suit accused Golubski of using his badge to terrorize the Black community for decades. It alleged a wide array of crimes and misconduct, including sexually preying upon vulnerable Black women and of having an illicit association with Brooks, who allegedly paid Golubski for information and protection.

The case settled over the summer for $12.5 million but neither Golubski, nor the other defendants, which included fellow officers and the county government, acknowledged any wrongdoing.

The allegations centered around Golubski garnered national attention last year when Team Roc, the social justice and philanthropic arm of rapper Jay-Z’s entertainment company Roc Nation, took out a full-page ad in the Washington Post calling the alleged police corruption in Kansas City “one of the worst examples of abuse of power in U.S. history” and urged the Department of Justice to investigate Golubski and the Kansas City Kansas Police Department.

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