Categories for In-Depth

May 15

2024

Who’s responsible for dysfunctional jail oversight board?

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Erie County Sheriff John Garcia. Photo by Garrett Looker. The Erie County Bar Association, the sheriff and the Legislature haven’t filled vacancies on a jail advisory board that hasn’t been able to conduct business for lack of a quorum. Meanwhile, prisoners are dying, prompting lawsuits and millions of dollars in settlements and verdicts. Tasked with overseeing the jail and recommending improvements, the Corrections Specialist Advisory Board hasn’t been able to review jail deaths, consider plans for a new jail or even approve a 2023 annual report that remains in draft form. The 11-seat board, which has three vacancies, is supposed[...]

Posted 8 months ago

May 8

2024

Dismissed Buffalo cop had history of complaints

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A Buffalo cop fired for dousing a woman with pepper spray and falsifying reports to justify his actions was the subject of nine inquiries into allegations ranging from rudeness to excessive force. Seven investigations came during Kevin Murphy’s last two years of active duty. In addition, a city parking enforcement officer whom Murphy threatened and berated complained in 2022, while Murphy was on paid leave pending termination for pepper spraying Lekisha Neal and falsifying reports. Other complaints included an allegation that Murphy had beaten a teenager while arresting him on suspicion of robbery. The department could not determine the truth[...]

Posted 8 months ago

Apr 25

2024

Reading scores lag across WNY

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Editor’s note: This is the first of a two-part series. Our second story is here.  It’s not just Buffalo where students are struggling to read and write. Only 39 percent of third through fifth graders in Western New York’s 99 school districts scored at grade level on recent English Language Arts tests. What’s more, 31 percent of students lack even basic reading and writing skills. In some districts, including Buffalo and Niagara Falls, that figure approaches or exceeds 50 percent. The problems extend from the city to the countryside, urban neighborhoods to suburban cul de sacs, according to an Investigative[...]

Posted 9 months ago

Mar 14

2024

Mortgage lending lags to Black applicants in Buffalo

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This is the first of two stories on the impact of lending practices on homeownership by Black residents in Erie and Niagara counties. The second story, outlining possible solutions, is here. Black applicants are twice as likely to be denied a home mortgage as the overall population in Erie and Niagara counties, an Investigative Post analysis has found. What’s more, the region’s 18 percent rejection rate for Black applicants in 2022 was higher than in all but a handful of other major metro areas nationally.  The gap between the denial rate for Black applicants and the overall mortgage denial rate[...]

Posted 10 months ago

Mar 5

2024

Lawsuit accuses Erie County Sheriff of stonewalling

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Erie County Sheriff John C. Garcia. Photo by Garrett Looker. The Erie County Sheriff’s Office is being sued for jail records. Again. The Partnership for the Public Good, which asked for records last May, filed suit in December after its request for documents for the downtown holding center and Alden lockup was refused. It’s the third time since 2018 that the sheriff’s office has been sued over jail records. In the two previous cases, courts ordered the sheriff’s office to provide requested documents.  “They don’t give up stuff they should give up,” said Nan Haynes, who sued the sheriff in[...]

Posted 10 months ago

Feb 15

2024

Workers protest loophole in state wage law

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  With the first glints of sun coming up over Kenmore Avenue, slowly burning off the morning’s 22-degree freeze, several dozen construction union members rallied Wednesday in protest of developer Michael Wopperer, hoping to highlight loopholes in New York’s prevailing wage law. Wopperer, the tradesmen and organizers said, had amassed some $17 million in public subsidies for his $23 million renovation of the former Wood & Brooks factory just across the road, yet will not be required to pay prevailing wage to the workers he’s employing on the project.  Wopperer told Investigative Post he’s employing some union workers on the[...]

Posted 11 months ago

Feb 8

2024

Minimal discipline for problem Buffalo cop

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In the space of 10 months, Buffalo police officer Davon Ottey cursed, wrongly arrested people, used excessive force, lied about brandishing a knife and sprayed hand sanitizer on a man who used a phone to record police, according to the New York State Attorney General’s office. Ottey’s conduct between June 2019 and April 2020 prompted five citizen complaints and was sufficient to warrant a criminal investigation, the attorney general’s office wrote in a Dec. 28 letter to Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia. For its part, the department sustained two complaints against Ottey, issuing a six-day suspension in one case and a[...]

Posted 11 months ago

Jan 29

2024

Policing Buffalo’s police

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Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia and Mayor Byron Brown testified last fall that the city’s contract with its police union and the power it bestows on an arbitrator make it too difficult to discipline cops accused of misconduct. “I think any chief executive that’s running the department would like to have the managerial ability to run a department, but that’s not the contractual language that was laid out well before my time,” Gramaglia testified during a recent deposition in a police brutality lawsuit. “The arbitrator’s decision, the independent arbitrator’s decision and finding, is final in a disciplinary matter.” Gramaglia and[...]

Posted 12 months ago
Investigative Post