Jun 23
2025
Troubling transparency issues with local cops
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Sandy Tan of The Buffalo News produced an excellent piece on the lack of transparency on the part of many local law enforcement agencies.
Ignoring or slow-walking requests made under the Freedom of Information Law. Failing to release information about taxpayer-funded settlements involving public employees. Having a seemingly separate set of rules for dealing with reported criminal behavior when it involves a police officer. Not acknowledging property damage incidents. It is all part of a well-worn playbook now being followed in the case of Daniel “D.J.” Granville, the embattled Erie County Sheriff’s Office narcotics chief who has been on sick or administrative leave since news of the April 2024 crash on the Lower West Side came to light this year.
A case in point, also reported last week by Tan, is the refusal of Erie County Sheriff John Garcia to provide the county comptroller with information on the use of county-issued vehicles in his department. Garcia, of course, is notorious for his contempt for the public’s right to know.
Mackenzie Shuman of The News did a deep dive on the presence of lead contamination in local schools. She reported “from 2020 to 2024, nearly 5,000 individual water sources in 193 school buildings across 28 Erie County school districts tested above the state action level of 5 parts per billion (ppb) for lead.”
Ken Kruly, in his Politics and Other Stuff, reports on the heavy hit on parish finances the Diocese is demanding to settle claims against it for the actions of pedophile priests. “Payments in the range of 10 to 80 percent of the parishes’ unrestricted savings are required,” Kruly wrote. Assessments run as high as $2 million per parish.
The New York Times detailed which states generate more taxes for Uncle Sam than they receive back in federal funds. (Gift link.) New Yorkers on average pay $2,300 more in federal taxes than our state gets back. That’s the sixth-highest in the nation, trailing Massachusetts, New Jersey, Washington, California and New Hampshire. Ten of the 13 donor states are blue states. On the other hand, red states account for 28 of the 37 states receiving more funds than they pay in federal taxes.
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Two things to keep in mind now that Trump has effectively declared war on Iran.
First, going to war requires Congressional approval. He doesn’t have it. Select members of both parties questioned the legality of Saturday’s bombing raids, with one calling Trump’s actions “grossly unconstitutional.”
Second, the president has ignored U.S. intelligence that’s concluded Iran is not working to develop nuclear weapons. Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are justifying the war on a false claim to the contrary.
Trump is lying to us, just as Dubya did regarding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and LBJ did regarding the Gulf of Tonkin in Vietnam.
ICE agents on Thursday tried to go to a baseball game, or at least hang out in the parking lot, and were turned back by the Los Angeles Dodgers. Speaking as a Yankees fan, I say “Go Dodgers!”
Book review: I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon. The California rocker asked his ex-wife to author a tell-all biography before he died in 2003. Crystal Zevon’s book is an oral history as told by musicians, managers, lovers (lots of them) and his family, along with excerpts from his diaries. Zevon, who will be inducted later this year into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, was unquestionably talented. And troubled — a degenerate, actually — who lived out the sex, drugs and rock-and-roll ethos of his era. For my money, his Lawyers, Guns and Money is one of the greatest rock songs of all time. Hit it.
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