Categories for DailyPost

Jul 30

2025

Lawmaker asks state AG to investigate Granville incident

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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 2 weeks ago

Jul 30

2025

Another bad review for ICE’s Batavia detention center

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For a third time in the past two years, federal inspectors have found that guards at the local ICE detention center in Batavia improperly used force against the immigrants held there. Investigative Post in February reported on two recent federal audits that found incidents where officers were quick to use pepper spray and manhandle detainees instead of deescalating tense situations. Now, a June report from the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general found two additional instances where guards violated the use-of-force policy against detainees. On one occasion, a detainee was locked in his cell, handcuffed. Officers arrived to remove the[...]

Posted 2 weeks ago

Jul 29

2025

What’s next for Chris Scanlon

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There has been much chatter about Acting Mayor Chris Scanlon’s plans come January, when he will relinquish his job as the city’s interim chief executive to the winner of November’s general election. Will Scanlon serve the two years left in his current term as South District Council member? Will he seek another elected office, perhaps in the state Legislature? Or will he leave elected office behind — at least for now — and take some well-paying job in state government or the private sector? Scanlon on Friday told an Investigative Post reporter he’s “heard the rumors” and insisted there’s nothing[...]

Posted 2 weeks ago

Jul 28

2025

Reform gives way to greed at OTB

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Before I get to what I’m reading, allow me to expand on a story I edited last week: A pay raise already for Byron Brown. As I wrote in my newsletter yesterday, I’ve written once, maybe twice that Brown has been doing a better job than his predecessor, Henry Wojtaszek, at the Western Regional Off-Track Betting Corp. Admittedly, it’s a very low bar to clear.  Then came last week. Dale Shoemaker reported that Brown got his board of directors to give him a $8,850 raise, bringing his salary to $303,850. Never mind that he’s already the highest paid OTB administrator[...]

Posted 3 weeks ago

Jul 25

2025

Buffalo lawmaker joins call for police oversight

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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 3 weeks ago

Jul 24

2025

A pay raise already for Byron Brown at OTB

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On the job less than a year, Byron Brown has already secured himself a raise at the Western Regional Off-Track Betting Corp. Brown, hired as new president and CEO last fall, won a 3 percent raise Thursday, bringing his total pay to $303,850. That’s ahead of a contractual $10,000 raise scheduled to take effect in January, which will carry Brown’s total pay to nearly $314,000. Five other corporation officials were also granted 3 percent raises by a unanimous vote of OTB’s board. The raise Thursday solidifies Brown as the highest paid OTB leader across New York. The next-highest paid OTB[...]

Posted 3 weeks ago

Jul 23

2025

More delays in creating Buffalo Housing Court panel

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Plans to reinstate the Buffalo Housing Court Advisory Council — which, despite being written into law, has been inactive for over three decades — seem to have stalled yet again.  The state judicial system says not enough people have shown interest in joining the council, which is intended to monitor Housing Court, make recommendations to the judge, hold quarterly meetings and produce annual reports.  Meanwhile, community members say the courts have done a poor job of advertising the search for applicants. “It shouldn’t be shocking that you don’t get a lot of applicants if you don’t actually make the position[...]

Posted 3 weeks ago

Jul 22

2025

Migrant crossings on our northern border

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Border patrol surveillance cameras at Fort Niagara State Park. Photo by Tina MacIntyre-Yee/Democrat and Chronicle. By the time four people paddled halfway across the Niagara River in an inflatable raft one night in 2024, a surveillance camera had already picked them out of the winter darkness. The image was gray and pixelated, their raft a single speck of black in the mouth of the river. Several miles away, a U.S. Border Patrol agent sat behind a dozen or more monitors and counted as four people stepped onto land. The camera followed the migrants to the shore in Lewiston, while agents[...]

Posted 3 weeks ago
Investigative Post