Tag: City Hall

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 6 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 6 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 6 years ago

Jan 14

2020

Council ignores police ignoring Council

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The Common Council committee charged with overseeing Buffalo police failed Tuesday to take up the department ignoring conditions lawmakers set for the purchase of 125 high-powered rifles two years ago. Investigative Post reported in October that police officials unilaterally changed training requirements and that most officers had not completed the training required by the Council to use the rifles. Police estimated it will be another two years before all officers are trained. As a result, more than half of the guns remain under lock at police headquarters. David Rivera, the Niagara District Council member who heads the Police Oversight Committee, did[...]

Posted 6 years ago

Jan 10

2020

Our local politicians are getting worse

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The November local elections are behind us and the national chaos of 2020 is right around the corner. (Like winter, it can’t end soon enough.) This seems like a good time to take stock of our elected officials in Western New York. But first, allow me to hold my nose. I’ve been reporting in this town for more than 30 years, and the quality of our elected officials has never been worse. I’m not talking politicians at the town and village level, as I don’t travel much in those circles. However, it’s safe to say that with sixty-two towns and[...]

Posted 6 years ago

Dec 5

2019

Heaney talks Control Board on ‘Pressroom

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Jim Heaney discusses Buffalo’s timid Control Board with David Lombardo, the new host of The Capitol Pressroom. The discussion follows a story by Investigative Post’s Geoff Kelly that documented the board’s inaction in the face of bad budgeting practices by Mayor Byron Brown and the Common Council.    

Posted 6 years ago

Nov 25

2019

Buffalo’s complacent Control Board

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 The Buffalo Fiscal Stability Authority, better known as the control board, costs city and state taxpayers more than $1 million a year. Its job, since it was imposed by the state in 2003, has been to keep an eye on Buffalo’s finances.  But during the past eight years it has done nothing to stop Mayor Byron Brown and the Common Council as they’ve drained the city of more than $100 million in reserves, leaving City Hall with nothing in the bank to close budget gaps.  In six of the last eight budget cycles, the Brown administration has depleted its[...]

Posted 6 years ago

Nov 21

2019

Buffalo’s No. 2 cop is moonlighting

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Joseph Gramaglia is the number two guy at the Buffalo Police Department, second only to the department’s titular head, Commissioner Byron C. Lockwood. That’s no 40-hour-per-week job. With more than 800 employees, Buffalo’s is the second-largest police department in the state. It’s a department that is making do with equipment shortages, introducing new taser and body camera programs, coping with overtime costs, and dealing with a series of police shootings that have strained community relations, especially with communities of color where police presence is felt most acutely. And yet Gramaglia — who, on behalf of Lockwood, manages day-to-day operations, strategic[...]

Posted 6 years ago
Investigative Post