Articles for Geoff Kelly

Jul 30

2025

Lawmaker asks state AG to investigate Granville incident

Sheriff John Garcia and Chief of Narcotics D.J. Granville at a March press conference. A city lawmaker wants the state attorney general to investigate the incident in April 2024 in which the Erie County Sheriff’s narcotics chief plowed his county-owned pickup truck into seven parked cars on the city’s West Side. There are currently three inquiries into the incident involving Chief D.J. Granville, which Investigative Post first reported in March. Niagara District Common Council Member David Rivera — a retired city detective who chairs the Council’s Police Oversight Committee — on Monday appealed to Attorney General Letitia James to launch[...]

Posted 4 months ago

Jul 25

2025

Buffalo lawmaker joins call for police oversight

Leah Halton-Pope at a Buffalo Common Council meeting. Buffalo Common Council Majority Leader Leah Halton-Pope is keeping alive her predecessor’s call for reforms to the Buffalo Police Department, including the creation of a civilian oversight board with the power to investigate claims of officer misconduct and recommend discipline. That makes Halton-Pope the third city lawmaker to express support for civilian oversight of policer, joining the University District’s Rasheed Wyatt and Masten District’s Zeneta Everhart. Halton-Pope, who represents the Ellicott District, submitted a resolution last week that re-ups and refreshes police reforms proposed four years ago by former Common Council President[...]

Posted 4 months ago

Jul 10

2025

Behind the closing of Club Marcella

The entrance to the former Club Marcella. Photo by Grant Ashley. When Buffalo police shut down Club Marcella in December 2023, club owners Joe Guagliardo and Michael Slyder seemed to have a lot of questions to answer. One person died and three others were injured in two shootings inside the club that year, and another three were injured in shootings just outside the club. In the 18 months the club was open at its new location on Michigan Avenue, Buffalo police responded to 32 assaults, 10 fights and four other reports of shots fired. The State Liquor Authority charged the[...]

Posted 5 months ago

Jul 1

2025

City Hall turns blind eye to parking encroachment

Cars parked on sidewalk at 145 Delaware Avenue in downtown Buffalo. Daniel Sack — a frequent critic of City Hall indifference, ineptitude and corruption — says the City of Buffalo for years has been allowing the owner of a surface parking lot on Delaware Avenue to charge customers for three spots that sit squarely on city property. And the Elmwood Village resident says it’s high time the cash-strapped city government stood up for the people’s property rights and claimed their share of the proceeds. “Every weekday if I drive by 145 Delaware there are cars parked on the sidewalk,” he[...]

Posted 5 months ago

Jun 25

2025

Five takeaways from the Buffalo mayoral primary

Editor’s note: This story was updated Wednesday at 7:15 p.m. State Sen. Sean Ryan scored a resounding victory in Tuesday’s Democratic primary for Buffalo mayor, beating Acting Mayor Chris Scanlon — his chief rival — by 11 percentage points. Ryan finished with over 46 percent of the vote in the five-way race, while the incumbent had just over 35 percent. The three other candidates — former fire commissioner Garnell Whitfield, University District Council Member Rasheed Wyatt and former Assembly staffer Anthony Tyson-Thompson — split the rest. Here are five takeaways from yesterday’s results: It was all about turnout Ryan’s base[...]

Posted 5 months ago

Jun 24

2025

Sean Ryan handily wins Buffalo mayoral primary

State Sen. Sean Ryan beat Acting Mayor Chris Scanlon in yesterday’s Democratic primary by about 11 percentage points — nearly 3,000 votes. I thought it would be closer. So did Ryan’s campaign team. There are provisional ballots still to be counted, but not enough to change the results. We’ll provide an analysis of the race and what voters say motivated them this afternoon on our website. But here’s a few things to know about how it broke down: — Ryan had 12,249 votes at the close of the night, Scanlon 9,278. Ryan captured 46.5 percent of the vote, Scanlon 35.2[...]

Posted 5 months ago

Jun 19

2025

Buffalo’s $2 million mayoral primary

Next Tuesday’s Democratic primary election for Buffalo mayor is already a $2 million affair, as of the most recent campaign finance disclosures, with a weekend of TV and radio spots, phone banks, social media ads and mailers still to come. That figure doesn’t count independent expenditures — money spent by political committees unaffiliated with, but supporting, a one candidate or another. The first such independent expenditure took place this week in support of Acting Mayor Chris Scanlon, paid for by an Albany-based group whose backers are for now a mystery. On its own account, Scanlon’s campaign committee has spent $950,879[...]

Posted 5 months ago

Jun 17

2025

Podcast: Profiling Buffalo mayoral candidates

There’s just one week left until the Democratic primary fro Buffalo mayor, the marquee race this election season. In the last month, Investigative Post’s government and politics reporter, Geoff Kelly, profiled four of the five candidates on the ballot: state Sen. Sean Ryan, University District Council Member Rasheed Wyatt, former Assembly staffer Anthony Tyson-Thompson and former Buffalo Fire Commissioner Garnell Whitfield. In January Kelly wrote a three-part profile of the fifth candidate, Acting Mayor Chris Scanlon. Editor Jim Heaney last week sat down to ask Kelly his impressions of the candidates and the contest. The candidates and their issues Acting[...]

Posted 6 months ago