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Sep 2

2020

North Buffalo bar closes following ugly behavior

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Racist taunts from patrons of a Hertel Avenue bar have led to its temporary closure due to violations of COVID regulations and a city employee being suspended for mooning demonstrators. Marchers demanding police reform and racial equality clashed with M.T. Pockets bar patrons Tuesday night, as the patrons hurled vile taunts and phrases, including the n-word, toward protestors.  “You’re killing my business,” Philip Alagna, the bar’s owner, shouted from the patio as tensions escalated between the bar’s patrons and protesters, who had returned to the scene of an ugly incident Friday evening.  Alagna is well known in Democratic politics and[...]

Posted 5 years ago

Aug 9

2020

Buffalo schools struggled with distance learning

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This story began in April with a handful of simple questions: How many Buffalo school students are participating in distance learning? How many hours a day are they engaged in learning? And how much are they really learning? They were obvious and reasonable questions. So we posed them to the folks who run the school system. Their response: hysterics and stonewalling.  We then turned to teachers, who, in often heartfelt terms, described their experiences working with students since schools shut their doors the middle of March because of the pandemic. Their experiences varied, but on balance they said distance learning[...]

Posted 5 years ago

Jul 28

2020

City Hall inertia on one-sided police contract

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Reforming the Buffalo Police Department will require changes in the labor contract between the city and its police union. Major changes. An analysis by Investigative Post found the contract — a behemoth of a document comprising nearly 400 pages of agreements, amendments, arbitration awards and memoranda — is decidedly one-sided in favor of the union. It makes it tough to discipline officers accused of misconduct and deprives the police commissioner of management rights that are a given in many other departments. Investigative Post also determined that the administration of Mayor Byron Brown, who has lambasted the union contract, has never[...]

Posted 5 years ago

Jul 13

2020

Former Bills great recalls beating by police

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On a cold winter night in 1987, Booker Edgerson was driving down Bailey Avenue, just a few blocks from where he then lived on Buffalo’s East Side. Suddenly, a flash in his rearview mirror: a police car signaling him to pull over. So he pulled into a parking lot — a “mistake,” he later called it, “because it’s dark up in there.” Within a few minutes, he was on the ground, surrounded by several cops, nightsticks raised. “They beat the shit out of me,” he said. It was a familiar experience for a black man in America. But the fact[...]

Posted 5 years ago

Jun 29

2020

Police suspend cop over misogynist insult

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Updated: 9:01 p.m. Buffalo police have suspended a lieutenant without pay Monday night and launched an Internal Affairs investigation into an incident captured on video Sunday in which he called a woman a vile name when she questioned why 10 officers were called to deal with a man who appeared high on drugs.  In the video, Lieutenant Michael DeLong calls Ruweyda Salim a “disrespectful little fucking cunt.”  Police Commissioner Byron Lockwood responded by ordering an investigation by the department’s Internal Affairs unit and then later suspending DeLong. Lockwood was responding to the wide circulation of the video, shot by Salim[...]

Posted 5 years ago

Jun 6

2020

Cops charged; mayor and activists negotiate

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Updated: 8:59 p.m. Two days after their push of a demonstrator drew nationwide attention — and condemnation — two Buffalo police officers were arraigned in Buffalo City Court on charges of second degree assault. A large crowd of fellow law enforcement officers made a show of support, congregating in front of the downtown courthouse and, in some instances, attempting to obscure the view of videographers shooting the scene. Officers Robert McCabe, 32, and Aaron Torgalski, 39, members of the police department’s Emergency Response Team until all 57 members resigned from the assignment Friday, were charged in a virtual arraignment and[...]

Posted 5 years ago

Jun 2

2020

PBA: Cops not trained or equipped for protests

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Buffalo police need equipment and training to adequately deal with crowds of protestors, John Evans, president of the Police Benevolent Association, has told Investigative Post. Evans is one of several officers who have contacted Ali Ingersoll in recent days to complain about the department’s lack of preparedness. Evans noted grievances and correspondence dating to 2014 in which the union has raised the issue with the department’s leadership. Speaking of this week’s protests against police violence, Evans said: “You want to end the thing without killing anyone or hurting them badly … I would like to see some of the other[...]

Posted 5 years ago

May 31

2020

Discuss the real issue. Racism.

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Allow me to provide some perspective in light of what transpired Saturday night in Niagara Square. The issue isn’t “outside agitators,” the unsubstantiated claim made by Mayor Bryon Brown and Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz. And it’s really not vandalism and looting, as unfortunate as that was. No, the real issue is how city government under Brown and his rubber stamps on the Common Council have targeted black and brown residents. Many of them turned out Saturday to rally against not only the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis but the manner in which police treat people of color right[...]

Posted 5 years ago
Investigative Post