42 Search Results for police cars

Jan 9

2023

Council presses Brown on blizzard response

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Reeling from the deaths of more than 30 residents — among at least 44 fatalities across the region — Buffalo’s Common Council is asking a lot of questions about the city’s readiness and response to the Christmas blizzard. Today the Common Council will consider items filed by three of its members, all demanding information and action from Mayor Byron Brown’s administration. On Dec. 30, South District Council Member Chris Scanlon filed resolutions asking for, among other things: An inventory of vehicles and other equipment available to the city’s fire, police, and public works departments. The use of federal COVID relief[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Mar 24

2020

Safety concerns for ill-equipped Buffalo cops

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Two Buffalo police officers have tested positive for COVID-19, about 10 others are isolating themselves, and yet more are working without protective gear such as face masks to reduce the chances they’ll become infected with the virus, says John Evans, president of the Buffalo Police Benevolent Association.  The shortage of working police cars, paired with the department’s coronavirus sick time policy, is putting more officers at risk, he said. Evans and his union are presently the prime source of information on the health of city police officers because the Brown administration is not releasing details, unlike other law enforcement agencies[...]

Posted 4 years ago

Aug 22

2019

Cop car shortage sidelines new officers

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Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown and the Common Council have shortchanged the Buffalo Police Department’s police fleet in recent years. They’ve replaced cars at less than half the rate the police department has lobbied for, and which is considered best practice by experts in fleet maintenance. Last week, Investigative Post reported on the sorry state of affairs. The police department has too few patrol cars, we found, and many of the cars that are in service are in poor repair. The situation, said John Evans, president of the Buffalo Police Benevolent Association, is “dire.” “There aren’t enough cars for the patrol[...]

Posted 5 years ago

Mar 23

2012

Weekend News Cafe

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The NYPD, people of color and the Buffalo connection Reports that New York City police have been spying on Muslims in the Buffalo area – without notifying the feds – fits a pattern that is coming under increasing criticism. The NYPA has an aggressive stop-and-frisk policy in NYC that targets men of color. Reports The New York Times: The Police Department has said that it conducted a record 684,330 stops last year, and that 87 percent of those stopped were black or Hispanic. One target wrote about his experience of being stopped five times by the police: These experiences changed[...]

Posted 12 years ago

Dec 14

2023

‘A Crazy System’: How arbitration returns abusive guards to New York prisons

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This article was published in partnership with The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system. Sign up for their newsletters, and follow them on  Instagram, TikTok, Reddit and Facebook. The Marshall Project is distributing this story via Investigative Post, the (Albany) Times Union and New York Focus. A guard working at a Hudson Valley prison pummeled a 19-year-old shackled by the legs to a restraint chair. An officer at a facility near the Canadian border denied food to a man in solitary confinement 13 times over a week. Outside Albany, a guard told a prisoner, “That’s how you get dumped on your fucking[...]

Posted 4 months ago

Nov 20

2023

License plate readers target minority neighborhoods

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Buffalo police have quietly installed license plate readers at 41 intersections in the city, two-thirds of them located in neighborhoods populated predominantly with people of color.  Buffalo police, in response to a Freedom of Information Law request for the department’s policies on license plate readers, wrote that they’re used for “law enforcement investigative purposes only.” While it’s unclear how the department now is using readers, police in the past used mobile readers to issue traffic tickets, at considerable profit to the city.  Unlike many other cities, neither the police nor Mayor Byron Brown, their commander in chief, have made the[...]

Posted 5 months ago

Jan 24

2023

Buffalo’s firefighting fleet is a mess

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Firefighters who spoke to Investigative Post described arriving at an East Side house fire earlier this month, only to find the lead truck couldn’t pump water. Several told stories about trucks breaking down on the way to a call. Last month’s blizzard has trained a spotlight on the deplorable condition of the Buffalo’s firefighting fleet. What’s illuminated is not pretty. A quarter the fleet — seven of 28 vehicles — is older than recommended industry standards. Another 13 are within two to three years of that mark. Many trucks are plagued by serious issues — cracked frames, unreliable pumps, engine[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Nov 14

2022

Testimony: Buffalo cops use of N word not uncommon

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A retired Buffalo police lieutenant testified in April he’d heard his colleagues use racist epithets when dealing with Black members of the public.  “Probably every officer” had used the “N word” at one point or another, according to retired Lt. Thomas Whelan, a former supervisor with the department’s controversial Strike Force unit.  He admitted he’d used it himself. “Have I ever said it?” Whelan said in a deposition for a lawsuit accusing the City of Buffalo and the Buffalo Police Department of racially discriminatory policing. “Yes, I have, obviously. I’m a human being.” Racist language.  Loose oversight and discipline.  Little[...]

Posted 1 year ago