Drug dealer to remain detained before sex trafficking trial with ex-KCK cop Golubski

A notorious drug dealer accused of running a sex trafficking operation in the 1990s with the alleged protection of a then-Kansas City, Kansas, police detective will remain behind bars ahead of trial.

Cecil Brooks, 61, will remain detained before he faces accusations that he conspired to sex traffic underage girls between 1996 and 1998 with then-KCK detective Roger Golubski and two other men, U.S. Magistrate Judge Rachel Schwartz ruled Wednesday.

During a hearing in Topeka, Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Hunting argued that Brooks — who has spent more than a decade in federal prison for drug trafficking — is a “very, very serious criminal” incapable of following the law. The survivors of the sex trafficking operation, he told the judge, are “still reeling” and terrified by the prospect of Brooks’ release.

“And they have reason to be terrified,” he said.

The defendants allegedly held girls, some of whom were recruited upon release from a juvenile correctional center, in a condition of “involuntary sexual servitude,” prosecutors say. As a veteran cop, Golubski allegedly protected Brooks from police investigation as he and others trafficked and raped the girls at an apartment complex Brooks operated at Delavan Avenue and 26th Street in KCK.

When he was indicted alongside Golubski in November, Brooks was serving a federal prison sentence for trafficking cocaine. He finished that sentence in June and was moved to the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service.

At the hearing Wednesday, Brooks’ lawyer, Jonathan Truesdale, argued Brooks had a home release plan, saying he would have also had a place to work. Truesdale also noted Brooks’ co-defendants, including Golubski, have been granted pretrial home detention.

Schwartz’s decision came after Hunting described Brooks’ tendency for violence during a previous hearing. One of Brooks’ enforcers told the FBI, he said then, that Brooks once tried to smash someone’s hands with an iron, but the victim kept moving them. Brooks allegedly shoved a gun up the person’s anus and warned him to stop moving his hands.

“I’m gonna blow your a— out,” Hunting quoted Brooks as saying.

Hunting has also said the two other co-defendants, LeMark Roberson and Richard “Bone” Robinson, were Brooks’ “lackeys.” Brooks, he argued, was the head of the criminal enterprise.

No trial date has been set. The men, who have pleaded not guilty, face life in prison if convicted.

Golubski, who retired from the KCK police force in 2010 and then spent six years as a detective in Edwardsville, faces an additional indictment alleging he sexually abused and kidnapped a woman and a teenage girl from 1998 to 2002. At least seven other women also told federal agents that Golubski raped them or tried to while acting under the color of the law.

Attorney William Skepnek, who represents multiple Golubski accusers, said Wednesday his clients will be relieved by the news that Brooks, who they feared, will remain detained. But they are “very disappointed” no trial dates have been set.

The next hearing was set for Nov. 21.