Investigative Post

The Buffalo Police Department’s budget has grown at three times the pace of other city services since Mayor Byron Brown took office in 2006, an increase fueled largely by the cost of health insurance and pension payments for current and retired cops. The city spends 54 percent more on police than it did 15 years […]

There is exactly one Buffalo cop whose past conduct has so damaged his credibility that the Erie County District Attorney’s office refuses to put him on the witness stand. His name is Joseph R. Hassett.  In an April 2019 letter to Buffalo Police Commissioner Byron Lockwood, DA John Flynn wrote that Hassett, 34, suffered from […]

 Updated: 1:55 p.m. The Buffalo police lieutenant suspended last week for his vile insult of a woman filming him has previously been suspended four times during his career and been the subject of 36 misconduct complaints lodged by citizens or the department. Twelve involve inappropriate use of force; three have involved domestic incidents.  Investigative […]

The City of Buffalo has three separate police oversight boards, but they’ve done little, if anything, to bring bad cops to heel.  One can’t. It’s an advisory panel with no power beyond its voice.  One won’t. It’s a subcommittee of the Common Council that seldom meets and does not investigate police misconduct.  And the third, […]

To hear senior staff tell it, the Buffalo school district never should have gone through with a contract awarded to HarpData to provide wi-fi service to students in two low-income neighborhoods. The firm’s finances were suspect, according to the district’s purchasing director, and the district’s unusual decision to waive a performance bond put the school […]

Politicians and police have been raising the spectre of “outside agitators” since the day protests began in Buffalo. For the most part, local media has amplified the message: Outsiders are slipping into town to incite violence and destruction.  But arrest records suggest that narrative is not true. And officials allow that much of the intelligence […]

Update: 3:15 p.m. There’s yet another consequence to the COVID-19 pandemic: More opioid users are dying of overdoses. Health authorities report that opioid use has not increased locally, but because of social isolation, more people are using alone, making it less likely someone is around to help them in the event they overdose.  Eighty-five people […]

Updated at 10:40 a.m. The argument prosecutors, and sometimes judges, make is that few inmates have tested positive for COVID-19, so it’s safe to keep them incarcerated. Authorities, however, are not testing many inmates, so they don’t know how healthy they really are. As a result, relatively few prisoners held in Erie County jails or […]