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KANSAS CITY, Kan. — An outside firm has begun the process of digitizing thousands of paper court case files in Wyandotte County.

The computerization process will help prosecutors investigate a former police detective. Wyandotte County Commissioners are spending $1.7 million to digitize nearly 70 years of criminal court case files.

Former KCK police detective Roger Golubski faces federal civil rights charges for allegedly sexually abusing women and coercing witnesses in cases he investigated dating back to the 1980s. He’s also charged with protecting sex traffickers.

The district attorney wants to conduct a more extensive review of 4,000 boxes of paper criminal case files that go back nearly 70 years.

Kansas City, Kansas, police already have said they are reviewing about 150 cases involving Golubski, but the Metropolitan Organization for Racial and Economic Equity doesn’t trust that examination.

“The same department, KCKPD, that protected Roger Golubski, not only protected Roger Golubski but enabled Roger Golubski to brutalize our community for 35 years should be nowhere near that review,” Lucas Behrens, community organizer for MORE2, said. 

District Attorney Mark Dupree says once court records are digitized, prosecutors will examine any case involving Golubski to determine if convictions contain questionable evidence that would not withstand scrutiny today.

The Unified Government is spending $378,000 in federal American Rescue Plan funds to pay for the digital conversion. The remainder of the cost is being paid for through borrowing and local tax dollars.

Digitizing the records could take as long as 18 months. In the meantime, MORE2 continues to call for a federal Department of Justice investigation into KCK police patterns and practices.