District Attorney Mark Dupree tonight got the Unified Government Commission’s approval for $1.7 million to digitize old DA case files to review past cases that former detective Roger Golubski was involved in.
Dupree said his goal was to bring more transparency, accountability and justice to acknowledge the mistakes of the past, correct them and ensure never to repeat them. The digitizing would make sure they could see every case former detective Golubski had been involved with to review it. They are proposing to digitize 60 to 70 years of files, about 4,000 boxes of paper files, Dupree said.
In September 2022 Golubski was indicted by the federal government on six counts, and in November he was indicted with an additional six counts, according to Dupree. There have been calls for the DA to review all of Golubski’s cases.
Golubski worked most of his life for the Kansas City, Kansas, Police Department, then some later years for Edwardsville Police Department. He was with KCKPD from 1975 to 2010. After retiring there, he was with Edwardsville PD from 2010 to 2016, Dupree said.
The $1.7 million will allow these cases to be digitized, and they would be searchable by name, according to Dupree.
Dupree made his request with the backdrop of a Rally for Justice conducted downtown today, coordinated by Team Roc and the Midwest Innocence Project.
While the UG Commission gave its approval, there was quite a bit of discussion about how to get the money. It was not budgeted, and state law requires funds that are spent have to be budgeted in a line item, according to UG attorneys. It apparently would be illegal to spend the money without budgeting it first. It was a challenge to get the money right away, as Dupree requested.
UG commissioners did not want to take the money from the ARPA Subcommittee’s recommendations, which have been made and were on the agenda Thursday night for approval. The cities of Edwardsville and Bonner Springs, though, made requests Thursday night that the county’s ARPA funds include something for their cities.
The digitized case files could be used for other investigations by the district attorney’s office, but they will not be made available to the public, according to Dupree.
Dupree said since 2018 the DA’s office has been reviewing Golubski’s cases through its conviction and integrity unit, those cases that his name was on, but now they cannot handle it case by case but have to do an electronic search to find the rest of the cases. The old paper files are stacked up in boxes in the former city jail, without much identification on them.
He said he had asked for the funding for digitizing these files in 2018. While he got some money from the UG, he did not get all the funds required for the digitizing project.
While UG commissioners were in complete support of funding this project on Thursday night, they were upset that the matter had not already been taken care of earlier.
Commissioner Brian McKiernan said he was disappointed the commission had not revisited this digital funding issue for four years, and now it is one big jump.
Commissioner Angela Markley said their job was to manage the city budget. Commissioners did not have advance warning about it.
“This came onto the agenda 10 minutes after we started,” she said. Her initial reaction was to wait and work out the financing for it, with advice from the UG’s budgeting staff.
Dupree said he had a conversation and request about the agenda a month ago. It had been taken off the agenda and then the mayor put him back on the agenda. It was not a last-minute request, according to Dupree.
In answer to Commissioner Bynum’s question, budget director Reginald Lindsey said the county side budget has $13 million in it at the moment. But they have started making other commitments for it, such as bringing sheriff’s personnel pay up to the level of police pay.
The county’s fund balance is about 16 percent right now, according to Lindsey.
There was a brief flare-up toward the end of Dupree’s presentation when Commissioner Kane said Dupree had been “extremely pushy” with his request. Dupree disagreed with being labeled pushy.
Later Dupree thanked all commissioners, including Kane, and said he had tried to communicate with them earlier.
UG acting chief financial officer Debbie Jonscher said that staff will be working to present a plan for financing this project, possibly to be presented within the next week.
To view more details from this meeting, visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jJIjr8I_Qw.