Jim Heaney

Jim Heaney is editor and executive director of Investigative Post. He was an investigative reporter with The Buffalo News from 1986 to 2011 and a reporter and editor with The Orlando Sentinel from 1980-86. His coverage over the years has focused on economic development, local and state government, politics, education, housing and transportation, and he was an early practitioner of computer-assisted reporting. Heaney has won more than 20 journalism awards and was a finalist for the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting.

Dec 14

2023

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

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 11 months ago

Dec 10

2023

Monday Morning Read

The Guardian published a piece that underscored just how out of step the Bills stadium project in Orchard Park is. Most owners, says Victor Matheson, an economics professor at College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts, “understand that having an entertainment district that generates money 365 days a year is way better than the model of a walled fortress surrounded by a moat of parking lots” that is used a handful of times a year. “NFL parking lots are about the worst possible use of real estate you can think of,” he adds. “You’d much rather have a stadium in a[...]

Posted 12 months ago

Dec 3

2023

Monday Morning Read

Monday Morning Read is fine. But you’re better off subscribing to WeeklyPost. More news, sooner. Von Miller was charged last week with assaulting the pregnant mother of their children. But the story doesn’t end there. It’s the second time Miller has been investigated for violence against a woman. Then there was the lawsuit filed against him by another woman alleging revenge porn. The charge: he shared photographs of them having sex with two celebrity friends in a “fit of jealousy, anger and rage.” The Bills signed Miller for $20 million a season to not just sack quarterbacks, but serve as a spokesman, leader and[...]

Posted 12 months ago

Nov 26

2023

Punishment not befitting the crime

In the wee hours last January, prosecutors say, Jones Woods threw a rock through a window at the U.S. Attorney’s office in downtown Buffalo. No one came. Woods left after 15 minutes, authorities say. Police found him later that day at the downtown bus station on Ellicott Street. After being arrested and charged with criminal mischief, he appeared in City Court the next day and was sent on his way. Ten minutes later, he threw another rock through a window at the U.S. Attorney’s office. “I knew if I came back here, I would go to federal prison,” he told[...]

Posted 12 months ago

Nov 26

2023

Monday Morning Read

A subscription to WeeklyPost, our email newsletter, is free. What are you waiting for? There’s been a fair amount of horse race coverage of the competition to succeed Brian Higgins in the 26th Congressional District. Charlie Specht of The Buffalo News named the three leading contenders – Tim Kennedy, Mark Poloncarz and Byron Brown. Where do they stand on the issues? What sort of agenda would they would bring to Washington? Poloncarz is the most progressive of the three and has a solid track record as county executive and before that, comptroller, although there is the matter of him and Kathy Hochul[...]

Posted 12 months ago

Nov 20

2023

License plate readers target minority neighborhoods

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 1 year ago

Nov 19

2023

Monday Morning Read

Get Jim Heaney’s entire newsletter by subscribing to WeeklyPost. John F. Kennedy was assassinated 60 years ago this week. It earned Dallas the moniker of “City of Hate.” One could argue the cancer has spread to the entire state of Texas under Gov. Greg Abbott – and beyond. Writes the Guardian: Six decades later, the city has grown beyond recognition and come a long way in grappling with that legacy. But the forces that turned Dealey Plaza into a white hot crucible are arguably more prevalent than ever. A 24-hour news cycle; gun violence; casual accusations of treason; rightwing extremism[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Nov 15

2023

Finally, answers on sheriff’s helicopter use

Since 2018, the Erie County Sheriff’s helicopter has rescued 14 people, according to records released by the sheriff’s office. The sheriff’s office has cited rescues to justify buying a new $10 million helicopter. The records don’t indicate if any of the rescues saved people in life-threatening situations, however. Here’s what records released pursuant to a Freedom of Information Law request from Investigative Post show: In 2021, the helicopter picked up two people from atop a grain elevator when one experienced a medical episode related to diabetes after the pair had climbed to the elevator’s roof, according to sheriff’s records and[...]

Posted 1 year ago