Granville update, plus other Monday morning reads

Police also, on the day the statute of limitations was set to expire, issued citations to Granville for leaving the scene of an accident.

One of the five officers suspended is Lt. Lucia Esquilin, Granville’s sister-in-law, who responded to the scene and signed off on reports related to the incident. The other four were Police Officers Brittany Bartels, Thomas Karbowski, Lisa Perillo and Omar Tirado.

The Buffalo Common Council’s Police Oversight Committee will hold a meeting this Thursday, April 17, at which lawmakers are expected to discuss whether Buffalo cops tried to cover for the politically wired Granville, who apparently was not tested for sobriety at the scene.

The Erie County Legislature will hold a hearing a week later, on April 24, as it seeks to determine what Sheriff John Garcia and other county officials handled the matter. As of Friday afternoon, Granville had not submitted retirement papers, according to the state comptroller.

From the moment attorney James Gardner emerged as the Republican candidate for Buffalo mayor, observers of city politics have assumed he was a placeholder. That is, that he’d drop out should the GOP decide it wanted to give the party line to someone else — to Acting Mayor Chris Scanlon, for example, in the event he doesn’t win the Democratic primary in June.

(It bears repeating here that Scanlon has said to Investigative Post and The Buffalo News that he would not seek or accept the Republican ballot line in the November general election.)

In order for Gardner to relinquish the line to someone else, he’d have to die, move out of state, or be nominated to run for a judgeship elsewhere in the state. The last is the usual practice. I’ve been told that, should the need arise, Gardner will be nominated to run for a judicial post in Yonkers.

Prominent attorney John Feroleto died last week at the age of 71. We didn’t know each other well — I refer you to Dale Anderson’s terrific obituary in The Buffalo News to learn of his accomplishments — but he had one of the warmest smiles I’ve ever encountered, and he was generous with it. Condolences to his wife, Paula, and to his children, John, Joel and Kate.

What I’m reading:

• Local developers want to turn vacant downtown office space into housing, but building costs and interest rates are too high, and banks are reluctant to loan them money, Jonathan Epstein reports for The Buffalo News. They’re lobbying state and local governments to subsidize their projects instead.
• The latest chapter in the Town of Tonawanda police saga: The police union issued a vote of no confidence in their chief and town Republicans hope the controversy will give them a leg up over incumbent Democrats in November’s elections, The News’s Steve Watson reports.
• The New York Civil Liberties Union reports that 127 government agencies across the state have 876 drones registered — a 65 percent increase in two years. Most are registered to law enforcement agencies, which dispatch them primarily for surveillance. Some departments have begun using them to respond to 911 calls. The Erie County Sheriff’s Office has four drones registered, according to the NYCLU. Buffalo police don’t have any active drone registrations. The NFTA police have one.
• Last month federal immigration agents raided a dairy farm in Sackets Harbor and detained three children and their mother, provoking shock and outcry from the small, politically conservative community. The family was released last week. New York Focus reports the episode has illuminated how important immigrant labor is to New York’s dairy country, where experts estimate more than half the workers are foreign born.
• The Hill reports that U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other Democratic legislators suspect some their congressional colleagues made money from last week’s tariff-induced rollercoaster ride in the stock and bods markets.
• Politico investigates lavish spending on family and friends by George Gresham, president of 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, the country’s largest healthcare union.
• ProPublica reports the Trump administration intends to stop collecting emissions data from most of the nation’s big polluters, including oil refineries, power plants and coal mines, as well as plants that manufacture petrochemicals, cement, glass, iron and steel. One climate expert likened the idea to “unplugging the equipment that monitors the vital signs of a patient that is critically ill.”