Five women who filed a civil rights lawsuit against the Unified Government of Wyandotte County and a list of former Kansas City, Kansas, police brass say they will appeal a federal judge’s dismissal of their case.
The women, Ophelia Williams, Michelle Houcks, Saundra Newsom, Niko Quinn and Richelle Miller, alleged in their 2023 civil lawsuit that they were abused by former KCK Police Detective Roger Golubski and other high-ranking detectives.
U.S. District Judge Toby Crouse last week dismissed the suit, saying the two-year statute of limitations in Kansas had passed and the woman gave no valid legal reason for delaying their claims. Crouse also presided over Golubski’s criminal federal trial, which abruptly ended on Dec. 2 when the former police detective committed suicide, as well as another criminal case accusing Golubski of protecting a drug dealer’s sex trafficking business.
In the civil case, Crouse wrote that his dismissal doesn’t speak to the lawsuit’s merits. The lawsuit claims “serious official misconduct, including allegations that law enforcement officers systemically and repeatedly sexually assaulted (each woman) and framed their family members for crimes they did not commit.”
An attorney for the women, William Skepnek, said he was heartened by that acknowledgement but disappointed that Crouse denied the victims claims.
“Obviously, as the judge who oversaw two criminal cases involving Roger Golubski, the court is intimately familiar with a great deal of the evidence supporting these victims’ claims,” Skepnek said, adding that he will appeal the decision and ask for a Kansas Supreme Court opinion.
Quinn, who like many of Golubski’s victims, doesn’t believe the official conclusion that there was no foul play involved in Golubski’s suicide, said she was frustrated by Crouse’s decision. She said she is praying for justice for herself and her sisters, who need some kind of closure for the many abuses they suffered.
“You got Black women against a white society and a police and judicial system,” Quinn said. “Of course they’re not going to believe us.”
Quinn says Golubski and a county prosecutor threatened to take her children if she didn't give false eye-witness testimony in the 1994 double homicide case of Lamonte McIntyre, who was ultimately exonerated in 2017.
According to the lawsuit, from before 1992 through 2006 the Unified Government knowingly offered a “protection racket” that permitted Golubski and others “to kidnap, coerce, pressure, sexually assault, and rape Black women in violation of clearly established constitutional rights." The alleged crimes also included selling drugs, gambling, sex trafficking, prostitution and trafficking stolen goods.
In addition to Golubski, named in the case are Terry Ziegler, a former chief and Golubski’s partner; Tom Dailey, chief from 1989-1994; and James Swafford, chief from 1995 until 2000.
Ronald Miller, who is currently the U.S. Marshal in Kansas, is also named in the lawsuit. He was the KCKPD Chief from 2000 to 2006 and supervised Golubski, along with detectives Michael Kill, Clayton Bye, and Dennis Ware, who are also named in the lawsuit.
The suit says Golubski was corrupt from the time he graduated from the police academy in 1975.
