Tag: courts

Feb 28

2024

Disgraced former judge returns to the bench

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A former Lackawanna judge who resigned in disgrace 11 years ago is getting a second chance at the job, which pays close to $100,000 a year. Lackawanna Mayor Annette Iafallo will appoint Louis Violanti an associate city court judge effective March 1, a spokesman for the city confirmed.  Violanti, 50, held that same post from 2007 until 2013, when he stepped down in the wake of a ticket-fixing scandal.  In December 2012, Violanti promised a friend he’d “take care of” a citation the friend had been given for an expired registration, according to an investigation into the incident by the[...]

Posted 2 months ago

Feb 1

2024

Accused spitter stuck in legal limbo

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Charged with spitting on guards at a federal detention facility nearly four years ago, Samuel Boima is still locked up. And there’s no end in sight. He’s a schizophrenic with convictions for armed robbery and assault. A final deportation order has been issued, an appeal denied. Sierra Leone, Boima’s native country, has granted travel documents. Federal prosecutors in Buffalo are keeping him in the United States, according to a federal judge who has urged the U.S. attorney’s office to drop charges of assaulting federal officers so deportation proceedings can resume. Boima in May 2020 spat while two guards at the[...]

Posted 3 months ago

Dec 14

2023

Lawsuit: Radioactive slag at affordable housing project

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A developer claims subcontractors used radioactive slag as construction fill at an affordable housing project just north of Buffalo’s medical campus. Now the developer wants the subcontractors, and the company that sold them the contaminated material, to pay $1.6 million for the cleanup, and other costs. The allegations were made in a lawsuit filed last week in federal court by the Buffalo-based McGuire PV Holdings, LLC. The company is in the midst of a years-long effort to revitalize the Pilgrim Village affordable housing complex, located between Michigan Avenue and Ellicott Street, across the street from Gates Vascular Institute. McGuire claims[...]

Posted 4 months ago

Nov 20

2023

Another claim of misconduct by Buffalo police

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After spending a month in the hospital, a Black Rock man shot by Buffalo police filed a notice of claim against the city Monday, typically precursor to a lawsuit. Jon Battison, 36, was holding a pellet rifle to his own chin in the attic of his home on Tonawanda Street when Officer Kereem Johnson pulled the trigger eight times. One round found the mark, striking Battison near the shoulder.  Police went to the home on Sept. 23 because Battison was reportedly suicidal and had ingested pills. “Suicide by cop,” Battison told police as he lay wounded in the attic of[...]

Posted 5 months ago

Sep 25

2023

City to pay $255k to victims of police raid

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The city of Buffalo is poised to pay more than a quarter-million dollars to a family whose Parkside home was raided by a police SWAT team hunting for crack cocaine.  Officers armed with guns and a no-knock search warrant found no drugs at the home of Maisha Drayton, then a senior director of staff development at the Evergreen Association, a nonprofit health care organization. Neither she nor her two children nor her husband, Trevor, who wasn’t home when police broke through the door shortly after 6:30 a.m. on Dec. 11, 2014, had any criminal history.  The city law department last[...]

Posted 7 months ago

Sep 15

2023

Judge throws out counts in fatal police shooting lawsuit

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A federal judge has dismissed several counts against the Buffalo Police Department and two officers involved in the 2017 fatal shooting of Jose Hernandez-Rossy.  Left intact in a lawsuit filed by Margarita Rossy, the dead man’s mother, are claims that police improperly used lethal force after violating Hernandez-Rossy’s rights against unreasonable search and seizure when they pulled him over on suspicion of smoking marijuana while driving.  Otherwise, U.S. District Court Judge William Skretny on Sept. 5 threw out claims that police targeted Hernandez-Rossy, 26, based on race and that the disciplinary history of Officer Justin Tedesco, who pulled the trigger,[...]

Posted 7 months ago

Jun 19

2023

Clover Group sued for discrimination — again

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Another former employee of the Clover Group has filed a federal lawsuit accusing the real estate firm and its president, Michael Joseph, of illegal and racially discriminatory practices. Shane Forrest of Greensboro, North Carolina, says the Williamsville-based company and its executives “intentionally engaged in illegal race-based housing discrimination by refusing to develop housing in or near Black neighborhoods.” In doing so, Forrest claims, the company violated federal law, as well as the laws of North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia, where Forrest scouted potential sites for Clover’s market-rate senior housing complexes.  Clover owns or operates dozens of such developments in a[...]

Posted 10 months ago

Jun 1

2022

Defense attorneys to DA: Zip it

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Last week the three court-appointed defense attorneys for the accused Tops shooter asked the judge trying the case to impose a gag order on Erie County District Attorney John Flynn. The defense wants Buffalo City Court Judge Craig Hannah to instruct the DA to refrain from speaking publicly about the case until the trial. Their fear, according to a Buffalo News report: Flynn or his staff might reveal details of the case or make other statements that risked tainting the prospective jury pool “in such a way that it will be impossible for [the accused] to get a fair trial.” [...]

Posted 2 years ago
Investigative Post

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