Tag: Police

Sep 28

2022

Raises (but no reforms) for Buffalo police

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Buffalo police just got a raise. The city got nothing — no concessions, no reforms — in exchange. That’s the upshot of more than three years of negotiations between the Brown administration and the Buffalo Police Benevolent Association, whose contract expired in July 2019. When talks stalled in early 2021, the dispute put in the hands of a state arbitrator, who was empowered only to deal with pay.  Reform — the mantra of demonstrators and elected officials alike in the summer of 2020 — was sidelined. On July 19, a state arbitration panel awarded Buffalo police raises and retroactive pay worth[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Aug 31

2022

Buffalo cop in hot water again

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Last summer, Buffalo Police Officer Richard Hy — a.k.a. the “Angry Cop,” notorious for posting satirical videos online — is accused of letting his anger get the best of him. In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in state Supreme Court, Curtis Lee Dean, of Buffalo, claims Hy intentionally backed his patrol car into Dean’s motorcycle at the corner of Delaware Avenue and Edward Street in June 2021. Dean was riding with a group of motorcyclists, whom Hy decided to pursue several blocks through the city’s West Side, according to a WGRZ News report on the incident.  Some riders took off to[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Aug 29

2022

Monday Morning Read

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Subscribe to WeeklyPost and you’ll get Jim Heaney’s recommended reading – and more – a day early. Well, I suppose we should talk about Matt Araiza, the so-called Punt God drafted, signed and given a roster spot by our Buffalo Bills. It turns out he’s also an accused rapist. And, as a result, a former Bill, as of Saturday night. The obvious questions are when did the Bills find out about the accusation and how could they have allowed the situation to get as far as it did? Team officials initially claimed they did a thorough investigation, but the accuser’s[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Aug 17

2022

Police union pressing to suppress records

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Buffalo’s police union is making headway in its efforts to put a lid on the release of officers’ disciplinary records. Last Friday, lawyers for the Buffalo Police Benevolent Association filed a lawsuit against the City of Buffalo, asking a judge to order the city to honor an arbitrator’s decision curtailing the public’s right to learn about allegations of police misconduct. If successful, the lawsuit would require the city to destroy all records of a misconduct complaint against an officer unless the department’s Internal Affairs Division finds the officer guilty.  That would eliminate records of almost all complaints and the investigations[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Jun 10

2022

Woman sues over cop’s c-word insult

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 A year after he left the force, former Buffalo Police Lieutenant Michael DeLong keeps costing taxpayers money. DeLong retired last March, after nearly 21 years as a cop, at least 36 internal affairs investigations, five suspensions for misconduct and six disciplinary conferences with superiors. In his first year as a civilian, he collected $65,761 in pension payments, plus health insurance, as he will until he dies.  But DeLong’s retirement benefits are just the first items on the bill.  Add to that the price of three civil lawsuits — one recently settled, two pending — for which the city bears[...]

Posted 2 years ago

May 19

2022

A smart purchase by City Hall?

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Most of Mayor Byron Brown’s proposed $5.4 million hike in police spending is for new patrol officers and detectives.  There is also $364,000 earmarked for a product called ShotSpotter. ShotSpotter deploys an array of microphones in a neighborhood — 15 to 20 per square mile, attached to buildings and light posts — to detect and pinpoint the source of gunshots, then report the location to police. The company claims the technology is 97 percent accurate, provides police with intelligence on gunfire that might otherwise go unreported, improves police response time, and helps to reduce gun-related crime. About 120 cities have[...]

Posted 2 years ago

May 17

2022

Buffalo is Segregation City

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Editor’s Note: The story below published May 17. The companion television story, produced wth WGRZ, aired July 7. Buffalo and Western New York need to take a close look in the mirror in light of Saturday’s supermarket massacre. And if we’re honest with ourselves, we’re not going to like what we see. The region has a long history of racism, one that has been compounded in recent years by a growing undercurrent of right-wing extremism. Witness Saturday’s shootings. In this column, I’m going to explore racism and its impact. Tomorrow, I’ll delve into the radical right. Hear me out. Related[...]

Posted 2 years ago

May 14

2022

Deadly mass shooting on Jefferson Avenue

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Investigative Post occasionally does work for The Daily Beast, a national news site. On Saturday, we teamed up to report on the shooting at Tops Friendly Markets on Jefferson Avenue that left 10 dead, three wounded and an apparent white supremacist in custody. Here’s a link to the story, which identifies and profiles the Tops security guard who died in an exchange of gunfire with the killer. As his son told us, his father died a hero.

Posted 2 years ago
Investigative Post

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