Categories for In-Depth

Aug 27

2025

Granville case costing city taxpayers

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The City of Buffalo has paid more than $200,000 to the five police officers who responded to the Erie County narcotics chief’s hit-and-run accident on the city’s West Side last spring since they were put on leave in April. The total cost to city taxpayers is considerably higher, however, because the city also has to pay officers to backfill the shifts those five cops are missing.  And sometimes the city has to pay overtime for that, because the police union’s contract calls for mandatory overtime pay when the department has to call in officers to take the place of colleagues[...]

Posted 2 months ago

Jul 17

2025

Latinos, roofers are prime ICE targets in WNY

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An ICE raid took place on Crescent Avenue in May. Photo submitted. Rather than targeting the “worst of the worst,” as the Trump administration claims, ICE agents in Western New York are primarily arresting immigrants with no criminal history. Data shows that more than three-quarters of migrants arrested in Western New York since President Trump took office have no criminal record.  To date, most of the 335 detainees are from Latin American counties, a significant percentage of them roofers and others in the construction field. By contrast, ICE arrested a total of 84 in Western New York all of last[...]

Posted 3 months ago

Jul 16

2025

ICE deception on immigrant detentions

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On X, ICE has used these words to describe detainees who were already incarcerated. Graphic by I’Jaz Ja’ciel. Since Donald Trump took office in January, the Buffalo ICE office has issued a steady drumbeat of press releases and social media posts purporting to show that its agents are taking dangerous criminals “off the streets.” But in reality, more than half of the immigrants ICE Buffalo has publicized since Trump’s inauguration were already in state or federal prison. Following a White House-issued quota, ICE data shows that arrests in the region have skyrocketed from 83 last year to 335 through the[...]

Posted 3 months ago

Jul 10

2025

Behind the closing of Club Marcella

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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 4 months ago

Jul 1

2025

City Hall turns blind eye to parking encroachment

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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 4 months ago

Jun 24

2025

Uncertain prospects for rent subsidies

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A rent subsidy program that helps some 10,000 households in Erie County is bracing for cuts in federal assistance.  Two of three agencies that administer the Section 8 program have stopped issuing new vouchers, despite long waiting lists. Some agencies are calling this a “complete 180” to their previous efforts in November to provide renters with better access to apartments in the suburbs and more well-to-do neighborhoods in the city. In January, HUD began basing Section 8 voucher awards on ZIP codes, adjusting payments to match neighborhood market conditions. That resulted in larger subsidies for rentals in affluent communities where[...]

Posted 4 months ago

Jun 20

2025

Feds seeking to deport sickle cell patient over theft

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U.S. immigration officials are seeking to deport to Venezuela a 20-year-old migrant living in Buffalo and suffering from sickle cell disease because he has been accused of shoplifting at the Walden Galleria Mall. A spokesperson for U.S. Customs and Border Protection told Investigative Post the charge of shoplifting “nullifies” Anderson Contreras-Hernandez’s legal status and, under the newly enacted Laken Riley Act, means he must be detained by immigration authorities. To date, he has not been convicted of any crime. The spokesperson described Contreras-Hernandez as “amenable to deportation.” His attorneys, in a lawsuit filed Tuesday, have appealed to U.S. District Judge[...]

Posted 4 months ago

Jun 12

2025

Political profile: Garnell Whitfield

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Garnell Whitfield at his Dec. 3, 2024 ,mayoral campaign launch. Photo by Nate Peracinny. Garnell Whitfield, the former fire commissioner, has specific ideas about what he’d do if elected mayor of Buffalo — about city finances, overtime costs, the shortage of affordable housing, and a host of other issues. But those policy positions aren’t the platform on which he’s built his campaign. And he doesn’t think candidates and voters should get bogged down in debating, for example, whose plan to rescue city finances is better, or how to restructure city government. Rather, he hopes voters will measure the candidates’ characters[...]

Posted 4 months ago
Investigative Post