A new lawsuit from Roc Nation alleges that minority and immigrant communities have been “subjected to an alarming pattern of abuse” at the hands of Kansas City, Kansas police for decades.
Roc Nation, rapper Jay-Z’s entertainment company, and the Midwest Innocence Project filed the lawsuit Tuesday in Wyandotte County District Court. Roc Nation pursues and champions social and criminal justice causes through its arm Team Roc.
In November 2023, Roc Nation submitted a Kansas Open Records Request with the KCKPD and the Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas.
The filing asked for complaints against current and former detectives and officers, documents relating to past investigations into the KCKPD by the FBI and the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, documents about deaths in the Wyandotte County Jail and department training materials.
The lawsuit claims in the last year the police and U.G. have produced very few documents, mostly training manuals.
“The Unified Government has relied on obstructionist tactics to stonewall, delay and avoid producing the requested records,” the lawsuit charges.
The KCKPD has long been under scrutiny over allegations of corruption and failing to rein in or remove police officers who allegedly used the power of their badge to exert control over city residents.
The allegations of police corruption and racism in Kansas City, Kansas, are the subject of KCUR's investigative podcast Overlooked.
“We have to set a precedent that transparency and accountability are non-negotiable,” said Team ROC managing director Dania Diaz in a statement about the lawsuit to the news media.
“For the past year, we’ve been pushing for documents from the government and have been continuously met with noncompliance. It’s unacceptable — getting access to those materials is critical to exposing the corruption, reforming local policies, and helping the local community heal.”
One of the ways officials tried to stonewall the records request was by charging an “exorbitant fee,” the lawsuit alleges. The police and U.G. demanded an up-front fee of $2,200 to produce the records.
The lawsuit says such a fee would have a “chilling effect” for most people seeking such records. Two months after the records request the U.G. denied most of the filing claiming the records were exempt under KORA. The U.G. and refunded Roc Nation $713 in fees it had already paid.
In separate statements, KCKPD and the U.G. said they do not comment on litigation.
This week's lawsuit is the second such action against the KCKPD by Roc Nation. In 2021, the organization sued to obtain records that would show evidence of officer misconduct.
In the 2021 lawsuit, Roc Nation likewise argued that the department should be compelled to release records that would reveal complaints made against police officers, as well as records the department supplied to the FBI and other law enforcement agencies about its own employees.
