Categories for News

Mar 17

2020

Virus prompts changes in court proceedings

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County and state court proceedings entered unchartered territory Tuesday, consolidating operations in downtown Buffalo and handling only arraignments of jailed defendants via video conference. The changes were implemented after a statewide memorandum ordered the cessation of non-essential functions, effective 5 p.m. Monday.  “It is hectic,” Andrew Isenberg, the Eighth Judicial District Executive, who oversees all regional court matters, told Investigative Post in an email.  “Our entire society has been turned upside down and that now includes our criminal justice system and, frankly, our entire court system,” said Erie County District Attorney John Flynn.  In Erie County, all arraignments are happening[...]

Posted 5 years ago

Mar 16

2020

Coronavirus throws electioneering for a loop

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On Saturday, as part of the state government’s efforts to suppress the spread of the coronavirus, Gov. Andrew Cuomo used his emergency powers to curtail the petitioning process for candidates aiming to make the ballot in the state’s June primaries. By executive order, that process — traditionally a door-to-door, face-to-face affair performed by a candidate and campaign volunteers — is suspended at 5 p.m. Tuesday, March 17. All petitions must be filed by Friday, March 20.  The original deadline for filing petitions had been April 2. The petitioning season opened February 25. To compensate for the abbreviated petitioning period, Cuomo[...]

Posted 5 years ago

Mar 12

2020

Erie County ousting its OTB representative

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The Erie County Legislature wants to replace its representative on the governing board of the embattled Western Regional Off Track Betting Corp.  The Legislature’s Democratic majority announced its intention through a media advisory issued March 5 and is soliciting resumes from applicants. Lawmakers plan to interview candidates April 9. Erie County’s current appointee, Beverly Mazur, has served on the OTB board since July 2010.  Like most board members, Mazur has ties to the Republican or Conservative parties. She is a former secretary of the Erie County Conservative Party who was appointed when Republicans controlled the Erie County Legislature, in league[...]

Posted 5 years ago

Mar 5

2020

Buffalo Billion: $50 million of waste

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Fifty million dollars is a lot of money. To most of us, anyway. Andrew Cuomo, not so much. At a time the state is grappling with a deficit you can count in the B as in Billions, taxpayers have been greeted with the news that Tesla’s plant in South Buffalo has scrapped some $50 million of equipment purchased with state tax dollars. It turns out Tesla didn’t need the equipment after all, what with its constantly changing plans to produce solar power products at the plant. Steve Brown of WGRZ broke the story last week — not that you would[...]

Posted 5 years ago

Feb 18

2020

More Buffalo cop cars on the way

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The Buffalo Common Council today approved two measures that will bring 51 new patrol cars to the city’s decrepit fleet. The Council, without comment or debate, approved a contract to lease 31 new police cars from Enterprise Fleet Management for roughly the cost of purchasing 13 cars outright. The Council also approved borrowing $1 million to purchase 20 new police cars. The cost to the city in the first year of the three-year lease period is $675,000 — about what the city appropriated for the purchase of police cars in the current budget.  In the second and third years, the cost[...]

Posted 5 years ago

Feb 4

2020

Police shooting costs Buffalo $4.5 million

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 On Tuesday, Buffalo’s Common Council authorized one of the largest lawsuit settlements in the city’s history: $4.5 million to Wilson Morales, who was shot by Buffalo police officers in the early morning of June 24, 2012, after a car chase on the city’s East Side. The bullet that struck Morales, then a 17-year-old student at WNY Maritime Charter School, instantly paralyzed him from the chest down. “It’s been hard,” Morales told Investigative Post in the offices of Dolce Panepinto, the law firm that handled the lawsuit, after the Council approved the settlement. “Mostly depression, loss of friends, and pain,”[...]

Posted 5 years ago

Feb 1

2020

Police brass overstate availability of patrol cars

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 Buffalo police officers have a lot fewer cars at their disposal to respond to 911 calls than their commissioner would have the public believe, union officials say. Buffalo Police Commissioner Byron Lockwood told the Common Council’s Police Oversight Committee on Jan. 14 that the department’s dilapidated fleet had 134 working patrol cars available to answer calls. The actual number is less than 50, said Mark Goodspeed, vice president of the Police Benevolent Association. Goodspeed performs a regular survey of working patrol cars assigned to the city’s five police districts. On the evening of Jan. 14, the same day Lockwood[...]

Posted 5 years ago

Jan 14

2020

Buffalo cops still waiting on patrol cars

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Investigative Post reported in August that the Buffalo Police Department was woefully short of working patrol cars. The city’s failure to purchase new cars regularly, deferred maintenance and inadequate staffing at the department’s garage had led to a situation the Police Benevolent Association president John Evans described as “dire.” Among the resulting problems: officers without access to vehicles to respond to 911 calls in a timely fashion. Almost six months later, Buffalo’s patrol officers are still waiting for relief. On Tuesday, members of the Common Council’s Police Oversight Committee learned the arrival of new cars is still many months away.[...]

Posted 5 years ago
Investigative Post