Categories for News

Aug 28

2025

WNY farm targeted again by ICE

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Lynn-Ette & Sons Farm in Orleans County.   This story was originally published by Documented, a nonprofit newsroom dedicated to reporting on immigration in New York state. During the early hours of August 14, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents launched a raid on the Lynn-Ette & Sons Farms, a sprawling 8,000-acre farm in Orleans County that specializes in growing snap beans, cabbage, and squash. ICE agents detained four Mexican workers and three Guatemalan workers. The recent arrests at Lynn-Ette are the farm’s second ICE raid in the past three months. In May, a similar raid saw federal agents detain 14 workers.[...]

Posted 3 months ago

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 3 months ago

Aug 26

2025

ICE deports West Side restaurant owner, family

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Katherine Gomez stands outside of Sabores De Mi Tierra, which she purchased from her deported client. Photo by J. Dale Shoemaker. During the four years William Murcia Henao owned Sabores De Mi Tierra — literally, “flavors of my land” — his West Side Colombian restaurant was celebrated. Opened in 2021, the Niagara Street eatery quickly earned local media attention, praise from a local blogger and a nomination for a state Business Council award from Assemblymember Jonathan Rivera. The restaurant won particular acclaim for its traditional Colombian dishes, which Rivera and others said was missing from Buffalo. But then, in May,[...]

Posted 3 months ago

Aug 21

2025

Comptroller: Granville was off duty, liable for damages

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  Report from Michael Wooten, 7 News D.J. Granville was off duty when he crashed his county-owned pickup truck into seven parked cars last year on Buffalo’s West Side, News 7’s Michael Wooten reported Tuesday evening. Erie County Comptroller Kevin Hardwick told Wooten in an interview that the news comports with county payroll records. And Hardwick said it means Granville, not county taxpayers, should be on the hook for the cost of the damage he did to the truck he was driving and the cars he hit. Granville pleaded guilty last week to one criminal misdemeanor count of reckless driving[...]

Posted 3 months ago

Aug 20

2025

State attorney general cites Buffalo cop for misconduct

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A Buffalo cop, in the course of responding to a domestic abuse call, tried to solicit a date with the woman who made the call, then attempted to sell her a car. The same cop, in uniform and on duty, threatened the owner of an auto repair shop, saying he’d “fuck with him like never before” over a failed vehicle inspection. And finally, the cop — Officer Kiam Gunn, a seven-year veteran of the department — brandished a gun while off-duty at the Delaware Park basketball courts, after a couple asked him to stop smoking marijuana near their children.  “You[...]

Posted 3 months ago

Aug 19

2025

Judge overturns immigration court arrest

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This story was produced in partnership with The Intercept, an award-winning investigative news outlet. Akela Lacy is a staff reporter with The Intercept. In a rare win against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement last month, a judge ordered that a detained 19-year-old asylum seeker be released back to his family.  Oliver Mata Velasquez’s arrest May 21 outside a immigration court in downtown Buffalo following his hearing on his asylum case was unlawful, U.S. District Judge Lawrence Vilardo wrote.  “Mata Velasquez followed all the rules,” Vilardo wrote. “On the other hand, the government changed the rules by fiat, applied them retroactively,[...]

Posted 3 months ago

Aug 15

2025

Narcotics chief pleads guilty in hit-and-run

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Attorney Terry Connors , left, and Erie County Sheriff’s Chief of Narcotics D.J. Granville at Buffalo City Court on Friday. Updated Friday at 6 p.m. None of the five Buffalo cops who responded to the scene of D.J. Granville’s spree of collisions with parked cars last April have cooperated with prosecutors investigating the incident. Niagara County District Attorney Brian Seaman, at a press conference Friday afternoon at Buffalo City Court, said he found the officers’ unwillingness to sit for depositions or meet with his investigators “very frustrating.” Granville, the Erie County Sheriff’s narcotics chief, was driving a county-owned Dodge Ram[...]

Posted 4 months ago

Aug 14

2025

Feds fault Scanlon campaign for Hatch Act violations

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x Federal investigators last week ruled that Acting Mayor Chris Scanlon’s campaign violated laws prohibiting elected officials from using their offices or public resources for political gain. The U.S. Office of Special Counsel found the acting mayor’s campaign on four occasions violated the federal Hatch Act: Issuing a press release “using official City of Buffalo resources” attacking state Sen. Sean Ryan in response to Ryan’s criticism of conditions at the city’s animal shelter. Mailing invitations to a December fundraiser using the mayor’s office in City Hall as the return address on the envelopes. Publishing links to the Scanlon campaign’s social[...]

Posted 4 months ago
Investigative Post