Categories for Co-produced with WGRZ

Mar 30

2020

COVID-19 hitting Kaleida staff hard

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Updated: 5:50 p.m. The workforce at Kaleida hospitals is being hard hit by the coronavirus. A document obtained by Investigative Post indicates that as of Friday, 34 caregivers had tested positive for COVID-19 and 81 awaited test results. Another 166 employees had tested negative.  Kaleida spokesman Michael Hughes, who failed to respond to emails and phone calls from Investigative Post reporters Friday and earlier Monday, confirmed the 34 figure in an email sent today at 4:55 p.m., after this story posted. His email read: “Over 10,000 employees.  34 positive. .03% …… “Hitting Kaleida staff hard” ???!!!!” Other sources say the situation[...]

Posted 5 years ago

Feb 26

2020

State stonewalling on IBM project

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Several years ago, the Cuomo administration spent $55 million of state taxpayer money to buy, renovate and equip seven floors of a downtown Buffalo office building to bring IBM to town. The payoff, we were told, would be 500 good-paying software engineering jobs and the start of a technology hub with all sorts of spin-off development. Now, four of those floors at Fountain Plaza are available for lease, raising all sorts of questions about IBM’s commitment to Buffalo. Has it pulled out? Working on a Plan B? None of the above? IBM isn’t saying. Neither is the Cuomo administration. In[...]

Posted 5 years ago

Feb 19

2020

Lead poisoning plan missing key elements

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In January, the City of Buffalo launched its long-awaited pilot program to combat lead poisoning. The pilot program is small — much smaller than the problem in Buffalo, which has one of the highest rates of children afflicted with lead poisoning in the nation.  And, as it stands now, the program lacks funding mechanisms to make it bigger.  Furthermore, a key element is still missing: a new local law that will allow city inspectors access to the interiors of the city’s abundant rental singles and doubles in poor neighborhoods. Those dwellings comprise 80 percent of the city’s highest-risk properties. Still,[...]

Posted 5 years ago

Feb 18

2020

More Buffalo cop cars on the way

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The Buffalo Common Council today approved two measures that will bring 51 new patrol cars to the city’s decrepit fleet. The Council, without comment or debate, approved a contract to lease 31 new police cars from Enterprise Fleet Management for roughly the cost of purchasing 13 cars outright. The Council also approved borrowing $1 million to purchase 20 new police cars. The cost to the city in the first year of the three-year lease period is $675,000 — about what the city appropriated for the purchase of police cars in the current budget.  In the second and third years, the cost[...]

Posted 5 years ago

Feb 7

2020

$40 for a six pack of beer? OTB parties on.

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 The Western Regional Off Track Betting Corp. is spending more than $300,000 a year on suites to Sabres and Bills games and concerts and running up large tabs for food and drinks, including copious amounts of alcohol. Officials claim they’re rewarding high rollers at its casino, but records show they’re also helping themselves to the free tickets and concessions. OTB, along with other Sabres suite holders, chose from a menu last season that charged up to $130 for a bottle of liquor, $40 for a six-pack of beer and $53 for a pizza. OTB, spending public money, dropped $85,690[...]

Posted 5 years ago

Feb 5

2020

Child pornography prosecutions on the rise

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Prosecution of child pornography cases spiked last year in Western New York. Between the U.S. Attorney’s Office and Erie County District Attorney, 80 cases were prosecuted last year. That’s almost double the number of cases prosecuted in 2017. “There are times where we’re finding child pornography involving children who are 10 or 12 months old. That’s very shocking, seeing those images and videos and trying to figure out why someone would have interest in that stuff,” said said Michael Hockwater, a detective on the FBI’s Child Exploitation Task Force. Cases the FBI task force handle range from a man who photographed[...]

Posted 5 years ago

Feb 4

2020

Police shooting costs Buffalo $4.5 million

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 On Tuesday, Buffalo’s Common Council authorized one of the largest lawsuit settlements in the city’s history: $4.5 million to Wilson Morales, who was shot by Buffalo police officers in the early morning of June 24, 2012, after a car chase on the city’s East Side. The bullet that struck Morales, then a 17-year-old student at WNY Maritime Charter School, instantly paralyzed him from the chest down. “It’s been hard,” Morales told Investigative Post in the offices of Dolce Panepinto, the law firm that handled the lawsuit, after the Council approved the settlement. “Mostly depression, loss of friends, and pain,”[...]

Posted 5 years ago

Feb 1

2020

Police brass overstate availability of patrol cars

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 Buffalo police officers have a lot fewer cars at their disposal to respond to 911 calls than their commissioner would have the public believe, union officials say. Buffalo Police Commissioner Byron Lockwood told the Common Council’s Police Oversight Committee on Jan. 14 that the department’s dilapidated fleet had 134 working patrol cars available to answer calls. The actual number is less than 50, said Mark Goodspeed, vice president of the Police Benevolent Association. Goodspeed performs a regular survey of working patrol cars assigned to the city’s five police districts. On the evening of Jan. 14, the same day Lockwood[...]

Posted 5 years ago
Investigative Post