Articles for Geoff Kelly

Sep 10

2025

Jemal late in paying millions in bills

Contractors have filed nearly $3.7 million in liens for unpaid bills against Doug Jemal’s projects in Western New York over the past year and a half. It’s another indicator that high interest rates and the diminished market for office and retail space have put the screws to the developer’s business. Jemal called those conditions “a pandemic of real estate” that have made cash flow tight for his company and real-estate developers across the country. “There’s cash flow issues, no doubt,” he told Investigative Post. “But we’re taking care of this. We pay our bills.” The mechanics liens — a legal[...]

Posted 3 months ago

Sep 3

2025

Evans town board settles lawsuit in secret

The Town of Evans in July settled a defamation lawsuit brought against the town and two current town board members by former Town Supervisor Mary Hosler. But you wouldn’t know it from looking through the town board’s agendas, meeting minutes and recordings. There is no record of the town board voting to approve a settlement in any meeting held between June and the end of August. There’s no record of the settlement being discussed in an executive session, which excludes the public from discussions of sensitive matters. There’s not even a record of an executive session being called at the[...]

Posted 3 months ago

Aug 27

2025

Granville case costing city taxpayers

The City of Buffalo has paid more than $200,000 to the five police officers who responded to the Erie County narcotics chief’s hit-and-run accident on the city’s West Side last spring since they were put on leave in April. The total cost to city taxpayers is considerably higher, however, because the city also has to pay officers to backfill the shifts those five cops are missing. And sometimes the city has to pay overtime for that, because the police union’s contract calls for mandatory overtime pay when the department has to call in officers to take the place of colleagues[...]

Posted 3 months ago

Aug 21

2025

Comptroller: Granville was off duty, liable for damages

Report from Michael Wooten, 7 News D.J. Granville was off duty when he crashed his county-owned pickup truck into seven parked cars last year on Buffalo’s West Side, News 7’s Michael Wooten reported Tuesday evening. Erie County Comptroller Kevin Hardwick told Wooten in an interview that the news comports with county payroll records. And Hardwick said it means Granville, not county taxpayers, should be on the hook for the cost of the damage he did to the truck he was driving and the cars he hit. Granville pleaded guilty last week to one criminal misdemeanor count of reckless driving[...]

Posted 3 months ago

Aug 20

2025

State attorney general cites Buffalo cop for misconduct

A Buffalo cop, in the course of responding to a domestic abuse call, tried to solicit a date with the woman who made the call, then attempted to sell her a car. The same cop, in uniform and on duty, threatened the owner of an auto repair shop, saying he’d “fuck with him like never before” over a failed vehicle inspection. And finally, the cop — Officer Kiam Gunn, a seven-year veteran of the department — brandished a gun while off-duty at the Delaware Park basketball courts, after a couple asked him to stop smoking marijuana near their children. “You[...]

Posted 3 months ago

Aug 15

2025

Narcotics chief pleads guilty in hit-and-run

Attorney Terry Connors , left, and Erie County Sheriff’s Chief of Narcotics D.J. Granville at Buffalo City Court on Friday. Updated Friday at 6 p.m. None of the five Buffalo cops who responded to the scene of D.J. Granville’s spree of collisions with parked cars last April have cooperated with prosecutors investigating the incident. Niagara County District Attorney Brian Seaman, at a press conference Friday afternoon at Buffalo City Court, said he found the officers’ unwillingness to sit for depositions or meet with his investigators “very frustrating.” Granville, the Erie County Sheriff’s narcotics chief, was driving a county-owned Dodge Ram[...]

Posted 4 months ago

Aug 14

2025

Feds fault Scanlon campaign for Hatch Act violations

x Federal investigators last week ruled that Acting Mayor Chris Scanlon’s campaign violated laws prohibiting elected officials from using their offices or public resources for political gain. The U.S. Office of Special Counsel found the acting mayor’s campaign on four occasions violated the federal Hatch Act: Issuing a press release “using official City of Buffalo resources” attacking state Sen. Sean Ryan in response to Ryan’s criticism of conditions at the city’s animal shelter. Mailing invitations to a December fundraiser using the mayor’s office in City Hall as the return address on the envelopes. Publishing links to the Scanlon campaign’s social[...]

Posted 4 months ago

Aug 6

2025

Police overtime in July unabated

One month into the city’s fiscal year, the City of Buffalo’s efforts to rein in the cost of police overtime have not manifested any savings. In the first two paychecks issued in the month of July, the city paid cops more than $1.9 million in overtime, according to city payroll data. Total pay for police in the pay periods covered by those checks was nearly $8.5 million. In July 2024, police overtime cost a little more than $1.8 million out of $8.2 million total. The July before that, it was $1.6 million out of nearly $8 million total. In other[...]

Posted 4 months ago