Categories for News

Dec 19

2025

The case for public financing of nonprofit news media

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This story originally published Dec. 19. It has since been updated and now includes an interview conducted by BronxNet, a public access channel based in New York City, with Investigative Post Editor Jim Heaney. Last June, CNN broadcast a live performance of Good Night and Good Luck, the Broadway play about legendary journalist Edward R. Murrow, who called out and stared down the red-baiting Senator Joseph McCarthy. Following the broadcast, Anderson Cooper interviewed Scott Pelley, correspondent for 60 Minutes, who at one point declared: “You cannot have democracy without journalism.” There’s a lot less journalism being practiced these days and[...]

Posted 1 month ago

Dec 17

2025

STAMP data center could jack up power bills

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A national builder is once again proposing to construct a massive data center at Genesee County’s STAMP industrial park, one that would use so much electricity that it could drive up costs for residential and commercial consumers.  The data center’s power demands could also hamstring efforts to recruit other businesses to the industrial park, which has struggled to attract tenants despite a state investment of $100 million. A proposal filed with Genesee County officials on Friday from Stream Data Centers for a 2.2-million-square-foot facility states it would require some 500 megawatts of electricity — 83 percent of all power that[...]

Posted 1 month ago

Dec 12

2025

Cops shouldn’t cooperate with ICE, advocates say

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A panel of law students and advocates presented the report Wednesday. Photo by J. Dale Shoemaker. A handful of local law enforcement agencies turn migrants they encounter over to federal immigration agencies like the U.S. Border Patrol — a practice some now say should end. In a report released Wednesday, professors and graduate students with the Buffalo Human Rights Center — part of the University at Buffalo’s law school — detailed the cooperation between local and federal agencies, criticized the practice and called on state lawmakers to ban it. “Our conclusion across many contexts and many actors is that cooperation[...]

Posted 1 month ago

Dec 11

2025

A double-dipping Niagara Falls defense contractor

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Americarb’s existing production facility. Photo via the Niagara Gazette. A Niagara Falls defense contractor is “double dipping” from public coffers, critics say, after winning a Department of Defense contract, a state grant and now, on Wednesday, local tax breaks. First came the $12.6 million federal contract, announced in September. Americarb, a materials manufacturer, was awarded the funding to develop a process for converting woven rayon fabric into “carbonized rayon phenolic,” a material that the military will use to insulate the rocket nozzles of tactical and hypersonic missiles. The company plans to expand its Niagara Falls factory and hire 40 people[...]

Posted 1 month ago

Dec 10

2025

Interview: Drew Warshaw, candidate for state comptroller

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Drew Warshaw, candidate for New York State comptroller. New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli has been the state’s chief financial officer for 18 years. That’s long enough, according to Drew Warshaw, who hopes to compete the first contested primary election DiNapoli has faced in his long tenure. It’s “one of the most powerful offices in government,” Warshaw said in an interview with Investigative Post this week. And yet “virtually no one has ever heard” of it, many “can barely pronounce” it, and even fewer could name the man who’d held the office since 2007. The office’s power, Warshaw said, derives[...]

Posted 1 month ago

Nov 26

2025

City to pay $3.3 million to settle Molly’s Pub lawsuits

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Defense attorney Joel Daniels and Jeffrey Basil. Photo courtesy of WKBW 7 News. It’s been more than 11 years since Jeffrey Basil, bar manager of the now-defunct Molly’s Pub on Main Street, pushed William Sager down a flight of stairs, then enlisted off-duty Buffalo police officers working security for the bar to try to cover up what he’d done. Sager, 28, suffered a traumatic brain injury and died on July 31, 2014, after two-and-a-half months in a coma. Basil was sentenced to 18 years in prison for manslaughter in 2015.  The following year, Robert Eloff, one of the off-duty cops,[...]

Posted 2 months ago

Nov 24

2025

Dozens arrested in recent WNY immigration raids

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ICE agents arrest a man on Elmwood Avenue. Photo submitted by Diane Hinman. Immigration agents have arrested and detained 44 people in raids across Western New York so far this month. At truck stops along the New York Thruway in Angola, Clarence and Corfu, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents conducted “immigration inspections” during a four-day operation that swept up 30 drivers and seven others. On Elmwood Avenue, four Hispanic men were arrested Nov. 13 in front of the Aquacates restaurant by agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Homeland Security Investigations. And this week, three men working at a[...]

Posted 2 months ago

Nov 19

2025

Across the state, discipline for police misconduct varies widely

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The Yates County Sheriff’s Office. Photo by Lauren Petracca for the New York Times. A teenage girl came forward in May 2023 with a horrifying complaint: Her adoptive father had been raping her since 2021, she told police officers in an interview at her school. After some of the assaults, according to a police report, he would give her soda, candy or blueberry iced tea. The abuse started when she was 13. The teen was removed from the home, and the case was assigned to Megan Morehouse, an investigator in the Yates County Sheriff’s Office who had met the girl[...]

Posted 2 months ago
Investigative Post