Categories for News

Oct 2

2025

Judge faults Buffalo cops in overturning jury verdict

Published by

Excerpt from Dean Taylor’s Nov. 8, 2019, interview with Police Department’s Internal Affairs Division. Two weeks ago state Supreme Court Judge John DelMonte did a rare thing.  He overturned a jury’s verdict clearing two Buffalo cops accused in a civil suit of assaulting a man who was using his phone to take video of a crime scene. The case dates back to Sept. 1, 2019. Police were investigating a report of shots fired near the corner of Kehr and Fougeron streets on the city’s East Side. Dean Taylor, the plaintiff in the lawsuit, stood on the sidewalk across the street[...]

Posted 2 months ago

Sep 24

2025

Wojtaszek’s wife, a judge, berates OTB employee

Published by

Niagara County Judge Caroline Wojtaszek. Photo courtesy of The Niagara-Gazette. Niagara County Judge Caroline Wojtaszek has been accused of “verbally accosting” an employee of Western Regional Off-Track Betting Corp. who was critical of her husband’s tenure when he was head of the agency. The employee, who spoke to Investigative Post on the condition she not be named, was one of four women who wrote a letter to the OTB board saying Henry Wojtaszek’s time as president and CEO was “filled with lawsuits, negative press, nasty and vindictive leaders.” The four women who signed the letter — all longtime employees in[...]

Posted 2 months ago

Sep 23

2025

Resistance mounts to Wojtaszek’s OTB return

Published by

Henry Wojtaszek, former OTB president and CEO. Photo by Dale Shoemaker. Henry Wojtaszek’s first meeting as a director of Western Regional Off-Track Betting Corp. isn’t even in the books yet, but his return to the agency he once ran is already facing resistance. The latest salvo is a Sept. 18 letter from Assembly Majority Leader Crystal Peoples-Stokes and Assembly Member Jonathan Rivera to the New York State Gaming Commission, urging that body to withhold a gaming license from Wojtaszek. His tenure at OTB, the lawmakers wrote, was “marred by labor violations, harassment settlements, fiscal mismanagement, and investigations,” meaning Wojtaszek “is,[...]

Posted 2 months ago

Sep 19

2025

More cuts coming at The Buffalo News

Published by

The Buffalo News is cutting its newsroom staff again and dropping content from The New York Times. Management informed their newsroom staff of the moves at a meeting Thursday. No hard number is attached to the staff reductions, which would be effective in early November. Up to five cuts are likely. Buyouts will be offered and layoffs imposed if necessary.  The newsroom staff is approximately 45. It’s down from a peak of over 200 in the 1980s. That number had shrunk to about 85 when Lee Enterprises bought The News five years ago. This time a year ago 10 jobs[...]

Posted 2 months ago

Sep 17

2025

Niagara County appoints Wojtaszek to OTB board

Published by

Henry Wojtaszek addresses the Niagara County Legislature. Photo by J. Dale Shoemaker. Republicans in the Niagara County Legislature made it official on Tuesday, returning former Western Regional Off-Track Betting Corp. President and CEO Henry Wojtaszek to the organization, this time as a member of its board of directors. In a vote largely along party lines, 10 of the legislature’s Republican lawmakers endorsed Wojtaszek’s appointment as a director representing Niagara County on the OTB board. Wojtaszek replaces Elliott Winter, who resigned last month citing personal reasons. Three of the legislature’s Democratic lawmakers and two Republicans objected to the move, suggesting Wojtaszek[...]

Posted 2 months ago

Sep 12

2025

A potential boost to ICE deportation efforts

Published by

U.S. Rep. Tim Kennedy. Amid the backdrop of the Trump administration’s mass deportation program, Congressman Tim Kennedy, a Democrat, has sponsored a bill that would mandate the hiring of thousands of U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers. Kennedy’s staff says the new hires would be used to facilitate people and goods crossing the borders. But data shows the Trump administration is using the class of officers covered by Kennedy’s bill to arrest and deport immigrants. The bill — dubbed the “Securing America’s Ports of Entry Act of 2025” — would require the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection to hire[...]

Posted 3 months ago

Sep 11

2025

Buffalo forfeits more than $1 million in federal lead funds

Published by

Signage in a lead abatement training facility. Photo by I’Jaz Ja’ciel. The City of Buffalo will return more than half of a $2 million federal grant it received in 2021 for lead hazard remediation. Investigative Post in May reported that the Buffalo Urban Renewal Agency had spent only about a quarter of its Lead Hazard Reduction Program grant funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. BURA officials told Investigative Post in a statement that “the program remains in progress” and that $796,050.71 in grant funds have been earmarked or spent on lead remediation. That’s $300,000 more than[...]

Posted 3 months ago

Sep 10

2025

How the investigation on police misconduct was done

Published by

This story is co-published with The New York Times and New York Focus. It’s a followup to yesterday’s story about police officers who drive drunk, crash cars, and escape meaningful consequences. In the immediate aftermath of George Floyd’s killing at the hands of Minneapolis police officers in 2020, New York State repealed a law that for decades kept the disciplinary records of its police officers secret. The New York Times and New York Focus, a nonprofit newsroom, have since gathered more than 10,000 such files from around half of New York State’s nearly 500 law enforcement agencies. The documents, most[...]

Posted 3 months ago
Investigative Post