Categories for DailyPost

May 28

2025

Police lawsuits push city budget into deficit

Published by

Buffalo City Hall. Photo by I’Jaz Ja’ciel. Settlements for police-related lawsuits continue to be a drag on Buffalo’s finances. Recent payouts threaten to create a deficit in the city’s current fiscal year that ends June 30, according to the city comptroller, at a time when the city has no reserves available to plug budget holes. Currently before the Common Council are two such settlements totaling $1.3 million. The bigger of the two is a $1.1 million to James Kistner, an East Side man who on New Year’s Day 2017 saw two police cars parked in front of a rental property[...]

Posted 4 hours ago

May 28

2025

Detained immigrant family emigrates to Canada

Published by

Marcos, Aracely, Madelin and Itzayana on the Rainbow Bridge. Photo by J. Dale Shoemaker. A Salvadoran family previously detained for weeks in a makeshift cell at the Rainbow Bridge in Niagara Falls and separated by ICE has successfully emigrated to Canada and been reunited in Toronto. The mother and her two children were admitted May 5. The father followed them two weeks later, after he was first detained at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Batavia and later released to the Vive shelter on Main Street in Buffalo. Local advocates who assisted the family said it’s a rare[...]

Posted 10 hours ago

May 27

2025

City inaction on lead endangers federal funding

Published by

Lead hazard remediation training at Environmental Education Associates. Photo by Andrew McLellan. The City of Buffalo has spent only a quarter of the $2 million in federal funds it has received to abate lead hazards in houses and apartments. Now, the program is coming to an end with less than two months to commit the remaining money before it has to be returned to the federal government. The Buffalo Urban Renewal Agency, which administers the grant, set a goal of remediating 110 residences when it received the funds in 2021. Four years later, only 18 units have been abated. The[...]

Posted 1 day ago

May 22

2025

ICE raids immigration court in Buffalo

Published by

In a rare, perhaps unprecedented move, armed ICE agents raided the federal immigration court in downtown Buffalo Wednesday, seizing four people who had showed up for scheduled hearings. Two people present in the court building on Delaware Avenue told Investigative Post they saw between six and 12 Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers — many in plainclothes, some armed — present in common areas and at least one courtroom. “I’ve never heard of it, I’ve never seen it,” said Jennifer Connor, executive director of the nonprofit advocacy group Justice for Migrant Families. “This is the first time I’ve ever seen ICE[...]

Posted 6 days ago

May 20

2025

Local DAs don’t prosecute wage theft cases

Published by

Wage theft — the practice of an employer withholding pay or benefits from a worker — has been considered a felony crime in New York since September 2023. Yet in the 20 months since, not a single prosecutor in the eight counties of Western New York has brought a single case under the statute. It’s not for a lack of offenders. Data from state and federal labor investigators shows that at least a dozen cases have met the $1,000 threshold of felony larceny since the law changed. Cases from October, November and December 2023 show eight employers were found to[...]

Posted 1 week ago

May 19

2025

‘Hostile takeover’ of union by Granville supporters

Published by

Members of the union that represents Erie County Sheriff’s officers last Tuesday voted to provide $25,000 toward paying the lawyers representing D.J. Granville, the narcotics chief who last April plowed his county-owned pickup truck into seven parked cars on Buffalo’s West Side. But some union members are crying foul on the decision and petitioning for a second meeting to reconsider the matter. “This was an attempted hostile takeover of our PBA’s democratic process by D.J. Granville and a small group of his supporters,” said one union member, who spoke to Investigative Post on condition of anonymity because he feared retribution.[...]

Posted 1 week ago

May 18

2025

Sheriff John Garcia’s disdain for the law

Published by

Erie County Sheriff John Garcia has gotten himself sued by The New York Times for stonewalling a Freedom of Information request from the newspaper. The Times filed an FOI request last August 12 seeking assorted police disciplinary records. For example, the Times asked for what are called “Brady-Giglio” lists, named for court decisions that require prosecutors to provide defense attorneys with information about officers that might impugn their credibility with judges and jurors.  By law, the sheriff’s office had five business days to acknowledge receipt of the request. It failed to do so until Jan. 23 of this year, when[...]

Posted 1 week ago

May 16

2025

I’Jaz Ja’ciel discusses food injustice on ‘What’s Next?’

Published by

Investigative Post reporter I’Jaz Ja’ciel this week hosted a segment of Buffalo Toronto Public Media NPR’s What’s Next dedicated to food injustice. She sat down with Nnennna Ferguson, chair of the Buffalo Food Equity Network Advisory Board, to discuss food inequities in the Black community and how community-based solutions may help meet the needs of residents. The episode originally aired Wednesday, May 14 to commemorate the third anniversary of the Tops Supermarket Massacre.  Ja’ciel and Ferguson discussed how the definition of food injustice has changed since the tragedy that saw the closure of the Jefferson Avenue grocer for a month,[...]

Posted 2 weeks ago
Investigative Post