Articles for Geoff Kelly

Nov 18

2020

Missing persons report for city’s control board

Editor’s note: The original version of this column incorrectly reported on events related to actions by the Buffalo Fiscal Stability Authority involving the city’s four-year budget plan. The source of the errors: The control board, on its website, incorrectly labeled videos of  special meetings held on June 16 and July 20. Investigative Post based its reporting in part on those videos, which resulted in a conflating of events. The text below has been revised accordingly. A control board spokesman said the agency was attempting to correct the errors on its website. Three times in the past five months, the city’s state-imposed[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Nov 2

2020

Problem cop still on Buffalo police force

There is exactly one Buffalo cop whose past conduct has so damaged his credibility that the Erie County District Attorney’s office refuses to put him on the witness stand. His name is Joseph R. Hassett.  In an April 2019 letter to Buffalo Police Commissioner Byron Lockwood, DA John Flynn wrote that Hassett, 34, suffered from “irremediable problems of credibility.” As a result, Flynn wrote, he would “no longer call Officer Hassett as a witness in any pending or future criminal action.”  In an arbitration proceeding that began two months later, Hassett’s employer, the City of Buffalo, sought to fire him.[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Oct 28

2020

M.T. Pockets gets liquor license renewed

Two months after an ugly altercation between bar patrons and Black Lives Matter demonstrators, M.T. Pockets remains open for business. In fact, the State Liquor Authority has just renewed the North Buffalo establishment’s liquor license for the next two years.  At the same time, the authority has charged M.T. Pockets with two violations: “operating disorderly premises” and “failure to supervise.” The charges are a result of the Sept. 1 confrontation, according to Bill Crowley, an authority spokesman. The SLA opened an investigation shortly after the incident, Crowley told Investigative Post last month. At the time, Crowley said, the SLA was[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Oct 22

2020

Kelly discusses Delong transfer on WBEN

Lt. Michael Delong, under suspension for his vile, misogynist insult of a West Side woman this summer, wants a transfer to head up police units that investigate sex crimes or trains rookie cops. Geoff Kelly discusses the story on NewsRadio 930WBEN.

Posted 4 years ago

Oct 16

2020

He shoved a cop and got away with it – maybe

Back in June, acting New York State Supreme Court Justice Mark Grisanti shoved a Buffalo cop as police attempted to sort out an altercation between the judge and his wife, Maria Grisanti, and some neighbors. Police body-camera video, obtained and published earlier this week by Law360.com, has drawn considerable media attention. In the video, Maria Grisanti stomps about screaming obscenities at her neighbors and the cops. An officer tackles and cuffs her, prompting the judge — his t-shirt torn and hanging around his waist — to run across the street and try to wrestle the officer away from his wife.[...]

Posted 4 years ago

Sep 14

2020

Saturday’s shooting wasn’t Buffalo cop’s first

Karl Schultz, identified in press reports as the police officer who shot Willie Henley Saturday afternoon, has pulled the trigger on a civilian at least once before. In 2012, Schultz fired multiple shots at 17-year-old Wilson Morales on the city’s East Side. One of the bullets he fired left Morales paralyzed for life.  The City of Buffalo settled a lawsuit with Morales in February for $4.5 million, the largest settlement of its kind in the city’s history. Schultz’s disciplinary history landed him on a list of officers, provided to Investigative Post by the Buffalo Police Department, investigated by Internal Affairs frequently[...]

Posted 4 years ago

Sep 2

2020

North Buffalo bar closes following ugly behavior

Racist taunts from patrons of a Hertel Avenue bar have led to its temporary closure due to violations of COVID regulations and a city employee being suspended for mooning demonstrators. Marchers demanding police reform and racial equality clashed with M.T. Pockets bar patrons Tuesday night, as the patrons hurled vile taunts and phrases, including the n-word, toward protestors.  “You’re killing my business,” Philip Alagna, the bar’s owner, shouted from the patio as tensions escalated between the bar’s patrons and protesters, who had returned to the scene of an ugly incident Friday evening.  Alagna is well known in Democratic politics and[...]

Posted 4 years ago

Sep 1

2020

Police transparency hinges on legal battle

For more than 40 years, state law and contractual agreements concealed police personnel records from public scrutiny. Complaints lodged against officers, investigations into misconduct, disciplinary actions, settlement agreements — all these tools for evaluating an officer’s suitability for the job — were almost completely inaccessible. That changed in June, when, in response to the nationwide protests following the death of George Floyd, the New York State Legislature amended the state’s Civil Rights and Freedom of Information laws to make those records public. Buffalo’s police union is not surrendering those protections gracefully. The Buffalo Police Benevolent Association is challenging the new[...]

Posted 4 years ago
Investigative Post

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