Team ROC Lawsuit Accuses Kansas City Police Department of Hiding Misconduct (UPDATE)

A new lawsuit from Jay-Z's Team ROC says the police department in Kansas City, Kansas has been concealing misconduct and "refused to produce documents."

team-roc-kc-cops
Getty

Image via Getty/Kansas City Star

team-roc-kc-cops

UPDATED 10/5, 4:00 p.m. ET: Team ROC has taken out a full-page ad in The Washington Post, asking for the U.S. Department of Justice Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta to open a probe into the Kansas City, Kansas police department over multiple allegations of misconduct.

In the letter, the social justice organization writes that “racism and corruption have led to one of the worst examples of abuse of power in U.S. history” and details how “the abuse appears to be widespread and systematic.”

“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. They detail graphic accounts of rape, murder, sex trafficking, and corruption are so rampant and so blatant, it would be shocking if even a single allegation were true.”

See original story below.

Team ROC has hit the Kansas City, Kansas police department with a lawsuit for misconduct in an attempt to acquire complaints about the police department’s behavior.

Lawyers for Jay-Z’s philanthropic group wrote in the filing that “for decades, members of the KCKPD abused their positions of power and authority to solicit and coerce fabricated witness statements and testimony, plant evidence, procure sexual favors, withhold exculpatory evidence, and conceal their own misconduct and ignore the misconduct of others.”

Team Roc’s suit claims the department declined to share records regarding the alleged misconduct of officers.

The lawsuit continues, saying the department “refused to produce documents relating to any internal investigations into wrongdoing by specific members of the KCKPD, preventing the public from evaluating whether the KCKPD has adequately supervised its officers, investigated any complaints, and addressed the allegations of misconduct against members of its force.”

The filing points to a number of examples of alleged misconduct. One such incident involves an officer who was reportedly charged with “buying sexual relations” this year. In 2020, another officer was reportedly charged with sex crimes linked to a minor.

“Allowing the public to obtain information about the scope and scale of the misconduct within the KCKPD will help ensure that the KCKPD is subject to scrutiny and oversight by the community that it is supposed to protect and defend,” the lawsuit says.

Last year, Team Roc extended its philanthropic efforts to uncover the cruel conditions that inmates were subjected to at a Mississippi prison, particularly in relation to healthcare.

Latest in Life