Investigative Post

Jim Heaney talks the pitfalls and politics of policing during an interview with David Lombardo of The Capitol Pressroom. Investigative Post has reported extensively on policing issues since 2016, including coverage of anti-racism protests in recent weeks.  

A group of local community activists have launched an online petition demanding the resignation of Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown. The activists say Brown has failed to show leadership in the two weeks since demonstrators took to the streets to protest police brutality. The petition states: From the start on Saturday, May 30th, protestors were met […]

Updated: 9:36 p.m. The police reforms announced today by Mayor Byron Brown fall well short of demands made by protestors and actions being taken by some of his big-city peers. Brown, after several lengthy meetings over the past week with a coalition of activist groups, outlined at a Wednesday press conference the first steps the […]

The focus of protests in Buffalo the past week has sharpened: reform the Buffalo Police Department. A coalition of activists have put 13 demands in front of Mayor Byron Brown, some more achievable than others. Protestors have also raised the issue of Sheriff Tim Howard’s deadly management of county jails, where 30 inmates have died […]

Politicians and police have been raising the spectre of “outside agitators” since the day protests began in Buffalo. For the most part, local media has amplified the message: Outsiders are slipping into town to incite violence and destruction.  But arrest records suggest that narrative is not true. And officials allow that much of the intelligence […]

Jim Heaney wrote Sunday that vandalism associated with the weekend protests shouldn’t usurp a long-overdue discussion about racism, including a failure by city officials to rein in their police department and address other concerns of black and brown residents.  Heaney spoke with Jay Moran on WBFO‘s Press Pass.  

Allow me to provide some perspective in light of what transpired Saturday night in Niagara Square. The issue isn’t “outside agitators,” the unsubstantiated claim made by Mayor Bryon Brown and Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz. And it’s really not vandalism and looting, as unfortunate as that was. No, the real issue is how city government […]

The COVID-19 crisis has laid bare the city’s fragile finances. But it hasn’t changed the Brown administration’s proclivity for budgets constructed on risky revenue assumptions and optimistic expense projections, according to a report issued Tuesday by the city comptroller’s office. In her report, Comptroller Barbara Miller-Williams expressed “substantial concerns” about the 2020-21 budget proposals Buffalo […]