Trey Songz, who’s suing the Kansas City Police Department and others over a 2021 incident at Arrowhead Stadium. Photo Credit: Mikey Hennessy
Just shy of five years after reportedly being taken into police custody during a Chiefs-Bills playoff game, Trey Songz has fired off a wrongful arrest lawsuit alleging excessive force and more.
Songz (real name Tremaine Neverson) recently submitted the straightforward negligence suit to Missouri’s Jackson County Circuit Court. Spanning five pages, the action centers on an alleged January 2021 “physical altercation” during which the artist was allegedly “assaulted by” the defendants’ employees.
Turning back the clock half a decade, some may recall videos of the alleged altercation, which seemingly saw police (and to a lesser extent security guards) take Songz into custody while he was attending the AFC Championship showdown.
The way the Virginia-born plaintiff tells the story, however, he was invited to the playoff game and, once there, faced heckling from “attendees seated in his proximity because of his notoriety.”
Said heckling then resulted in security and police “being summoned” to the appropriate seating section, where they allegedly failed to “exercise any professional duty to take reasonable care to protect” Songz “from the actions of the unruly, aggressive, and intoxicated attendees,” per the legal text.
Instead, the three-time Grammy nominee was allegedly “physically assaulted, wrongfully arrested, handcuffed,” and jailed. “All charges,” for trespassing, resisting arrest, and assaulting an officer, were ultimately dismissed, according to the suit.
Consequently, the defendants’ team members allegedly “negligently acted without due care on the day in question,” including by allegedly failing to keep the peace, allegedly using excessive force, and allegedly unlawfully jailing the plaintiff.
And this alleged negligence is said to have “caused serious, permanent, and progressive injuries to” the 41-year-old, including “a diminished enjoyment of life, pain and suffering, mental anguish,” and more.
When contacted, the Kansas City Police Department pointed to a policy of not commenting on pending litigation. And the Government Employees Health Association (GEHA), which has since March (not January) 2021 held Arrowhead Stadium field-naming rights, didn’t respond to a statement request in time for publishing.
Things are a bit more complicated on the security side. The complaint also names as a defendant Whelan Event Services (current name BEST Crowd Management).
As recapped on the relevant website, 2019 saw security giant GardaWorld acquire Whelan Security, and GardaWorld’s site further features an office address (largely) matching that attached to Whelan in the suit.
Nevertheless, a GardaWorld rep told us that Whelan/BEST had only handled Arrowhead Stadium’s security until 2019, emphasizing for good measure that an entirely unrelated non-Garda provider was in place at the time of the 2021 incident.
And while GardaWorld didn’t disclose the unrelated provider’s name, one video of the alleged wrongful arrest rather clearly shows multiple guards wearing jackets featuring the name of a different security company.
Not a party to (or even mentioned in) Songz’s action, this company seemingly sold in 2023 to the business that’s currently billed as the gameday security provider on GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium’s website.
