May 18
2025
Sheriff John Garcia’s distain for the law
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Erie County Sheriff John Garcia has gotten himself sued by The New York Times for stonewalling a Freedom of Information request from the newspaper.
The Times filed an FOI request last August 12 seeking assorted police disciplinary records. For example, the Times asked for what are called “Brady-Giglio” lists, named for court decisions that require prosecutors to provide defense attorneys with information about officers that might impugn their credibility with judges and jurors.
By law, the sheriff’s office had five business days to acknowledge receipt of the request. It failed to do so until Jan. 23 of this year, when it denied the request in its entirety.
The Times filed an appeal, which the sheriff’s office failed to rule on within the required 10 business days. It belatedly upheld the denial.
The matter will now be decided in court. The case has been assigned to state Supreme Court Justice Amy Martoche, recently named chief administrative judge for the 8th Judicial District.
The sheriff’s handling of The Times request is typical of how Garcia and his senior staff deal with the press. Garcia has been stonewalling Investigative Post reporters for years.
The sheriff dummied up when reporter Bruce Rushton sought records concerning deaths in the county’s two jails. Despite Garcia’s obstruction, Bruce was able to determine that the number of deaths was far higher than previously reported. In fact, the death rate has increased since Garcia took office.
The sheriff’s office also fought Bruce for months over a request for records related to deployments of the sheriff’s helicopter, at a time when he was asking county officials to give him $10 million to buy a new one.
Garcia’s office recently denied Investigative Post’s request for records related to the service of protection orders citing the same vague exemptions they used on the Times: The documents “cannot be located with reasonable effort,” the request was “too broad,” and “may constitute an unwarranted invasion of privacy.”
It’s not just that the sheriff flouts open records laws. His communications staff won’t even pick up the phone. Prior to our reporter filing the FOI request, Garcia’s public information officers failed to acknowledge at least four emails and six phone calls seeking information on the subject.
They similarly ignored a half-dozen emails and phone calls regarding the D.J. Granville affair, and completed their obstinacy by brushing away a FOIL request. Garcia’s office claimed it “does not maintain or possess” any records related to the narcotics chief’s high-and-run escapades on the city’s West Side last April.
Last spring the Partnership for the Public Good sued the sheriff’s office for refusing to provide records regarding prisoners in the county’s two jails. It was the third time since 2018 that the sheriff’s office was sued over jail records, we reported at the time. In two previous cases, courts ordered the sheriff’s office to provide requested documents.
“They don’t give up stuff they should give up,” attorney Nan Haynes, who sued the sheriff in 2018 to get records for the Buffalo chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, told our reporter. “If they have something they don’t want to give up, you have to sue.”
Garcia, elected to his first term four years ago on the Republican line, is running for re-election unopposed in November. It’s been 32 years since a Democrat was elected to the office. Erie County Democratic Committee Chair Jeremy Zellner told The Buffalo News in March that he had tried, but failed, to recruit a challenger.
In short, voters will have no voice but to retain a sheriff who doesn’t obey the law.
Congressman Nick Langworthy is on board with efforts to gut Medicare. It’s really about cutting waste, he claims. He presumably supports President Donald Trump’s proposal to boost the defense budget to over $1 trillion because, ya know, there’s no waste in military spending.
The Buffalo News editorial board lamented the mostly-talk-but-little-action response to the May 14 murders on the East Side three years ago. “East Side progress — though tinged with hope — remains a waiting game.”
The stock price of Plug Power, the recipient of tens of millions of dollars in subsidies to locate at the STAMP industrial park in Genesee County, dropped by 35 percent last month and another 10 percent last Tuesday after it announced a first-quarter loss of $196 million. The politicians sure know how to pick ‘em.
The rich, especially the 1 percent, are largely responsible for global warming. A new analysis has concluded “the world’s wealthiest 10% have caused two-thirds of observed global warming since 1990. Scientists were able to pinpoint that the top 1% of high-income earners contributed 26 times the global average.”
A hat trick of stories from ProPublica:
- The cancer drug that costs 25 cents to produce and sells for $1,000.
- Budget cuts are hamstringing efforts to restore the Great Lakes. Among other problems, “scientists are concerned that they have lost the ability to protect the public from toxic algal blooms.”
- The Trump administration has leaned on African governments in an effort to drum up business for Elon Musk.
Another government function crippled under Trump: The Federal Elections Commission can’t enforce and regulate federal campaign finance laws because of the president’s failure to fill vacancies among the ranks of its commissioners.
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Book review: I just finished The Bona Fide Legend of Cool Papa Bell: Speed, Grace, and the Negro Leagues, on the Hall of Fame star the ’20s and ’30s. Think Rickey Henderson, only faster. Like other Black stars of the era, he was banned from the major leagues due to efforts led by then Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis.
Bruce Springsteen kicked off his world tour in England last week and didn’t hold back on what he sees unfolding in his native land. He spoke to concertgoers about our “unfit president and rogue government” and lamented that “the world’s richest men are taking satisfaction in abandoning the world’s poorest children to sickness and death.”
