Investigative Post

In Buffalo, crime — and the police response to it — is a tale of two cities. Let’s say you witness an assault in progress on the city’s East Side and call 911. That’s a high-priority call: The threat of harm is immediate and there is — or was, at the time of the call […]

Calculating response times from the 911 data acquired from Central Police Services is fraught with difficulty.  For each call, the 911 log provides the moment:  A 911 operator took the call. The call was transferred to a Buffalo Police Department dispatcher.  An officer accepted the call from the dispatcher. An officer reported arriving at the […]

Editor’s note: A version of this column appeared in Buffalo Spree. My wife recently told me of an acquaintance who was moving to California. My response: Who would want to move to California? The land of forest fires, droughts and water shortages? The same could be said of much of the West and Southwest. It’s […]

This story was written by Jim Heaney based on interviews by Investigative Post reporters with 120 City of Buffalo voters. The interviews were conducted at 19 polling places, located in all nine Common Council districts. Three-quarters of the interviews took place on election day, the balance during early voting last week. Participating staff included Layne […]

Statistically speaking, Buffalo is safer today than it was when Mayor Byron Brown took office in 2006. But it doesn’t feel that way to Gayla Ross.  Ross lost her only son, Amir Jemes, in 2018. Jemes, 19, an aspiring musician, was shot and killed while being robbed on Littlefield Avenue on the city’s East Side. […]

In 1990, researchers at the University at Buffalo took a comprehensive look at what it was like to be Black and living in Buffalo. They found large numbers of African Americans were out of work, living in poverty, lacked a college degree and were renters rather than homeowners. The report predicted that the “downward trend” […]

The night before the Buffalo mayoral primary, India Walton’s campaign made nearly 19,000 calls to Democratic voters in the city, reminding them to vote and making the case for Walton over four-term incumbent Byron Brown. The campaign sent almost 100,000 text messages, too, while more than 150 Walton supporters stationed themselves at polling sites across […]

A state Supreme Court judge is preparing to decide the penalty for Peter J. Battaglia Jr., three years after his illegal concrete crushing business in South Buffalo was shut down.  Judge Deborah Chimes has ruled Battaglia could be held personally liable for the damages requested in a lawsuit filed by the New York State Attorney […]