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May 25

2022

Heaney talks segregation on ‘Pressroom

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Jim Heaney discusses his story last week on segregation in Western New York with David Lombardo on The Capitol Pressroom. Heaney recounted how Erie and Niagara counties are the sixth-most segregated metropolitan region in the nation and Buffalo the 17th most-segregated city, in which 85 percent of Blacks live east of Main Street.   In case you missed it, here’s our other reporting related to the supermarket massacre that left 10 people dead. The rise of the radical right in Western New York. Right wing coalition elects 22 school board candidates in WNY. East Side residents are hopeful, yet skeptical,[...]

Posted 2 years ago

May 24

2022

East Side residents “exhausted” by inequities

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Boarded-up buildings. Vacant lots. Gun violence. Lack of economic investment and jobs. A single grocery store where residents can buy quality food at affordable prices.  These are issues East Side residents have dealt with for years.  In the wake of the mass shooting that claimed 10 lives at the community’s lone supermarket — the Tops store on Jefferson Avenue — residents who spoke with Investigative Post last week said they’re hopeful some good can come from the tragedy. Hopeful, but not optimistic. Several residents said they’ve heard the rhetoric about real change coming to the East Side before. They’re still[...]

Posted 2 years ago

May 23

2022

Easing the path to graduation

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The New York State Education Department has lowered the academic bar for graduating students again this year.  Last week, the Board of Regents approved a temporary policy that broadens the scope in which students are able to appeal and graduate despite failing scores on required Regents exams.  This is the third consecutive year the Board has made changes involving Regents exam requirements for graduation, citing the ongoing impacts and “varied teaching and learning conditions” caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. Before the pandemic, students were required to earn a score of 65 or higher on at least four Regents exams in[...]

Posted 2 years ago

May 22

2022

Monday Morning Read

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If you subscribe to WeeklyPost, our newsletter delivered via email Sunday mornings,  you could have read this post – and more – yesterday. Just saying. Subscribe here. Byron Brown told CNN last week that the federal government needs to do more to help cities like Buffalo. Strange words coming from a mayor who has turned his back on the East Side during his 16 years in office, as documented by a study released last fall that detailed how Black neighborhoods have suffered in part because of the neglect of city government. It looks like people in the Black community want to end the neglect,[...]

Posted 2 years ago

May 22

2022

Scenes from a tragedy

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Last Friday, Layne Dowdall, camera in hand, visited the neighborhood around the Tops supermarket on Jefferson Avenue that was the scene of the horrific shooting of 10 people by a white supremacist on May 14. She captured scenes of a community grieving and coping, and the landscape of the neighborhood which is anchored by the  supermarket. Memorials honor the victims: Volunteers hand out food and supplies: Community shows support: Undeveloped lots surround the Tops Market:

Posted 2 years ago

May 19

2022

Radical right makes school board inroads

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Eleven newly elected school board candidates in Erie and Niagara counties are only two degrees of separation away from Western New York’s radical right. That is to say, they were endorsed by Western New York Students First, which portrays itself as a non-partisan organization but has extensive ties to some of the area’s most radical figures and groups. For example, David DiPietro, considered one of the state Assembly’s most right-leaning members, hosted a fundraiser for them in September; security was provided by the New York Watchmen, a quasi-militia. WNY Students First teamed with the Constitutional Coalition of Western New York,[...]

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 18

2022

The rise of the radical right in WNY

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Some people here are taking solace in the fact that the white supremacist who killed 10 people in Saturday’s supermarket massacre is from out of town.  As if Western New York doesn’t have its own growing cadre of right-wing extremists. I’ll start with a reminder of a story we did last June in which Investigative Post reported only one county in the entire country had more of its citizens arrested on charges related to the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol than Erie County.  Among those charged was an Amherst man who assaulted a Capitol Police officer, stealing his[...]

Posted 3 years ago
Investigative Post