Categories for Investigations

Nov 2

2020

Problem cop still on Buffalo police force

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There is exactly one Buffalo cop whose past conduct has so damaged his credibility that the Erie County District Attorney’s office refuses to put him on the witness stand. His name is Joseph R. Hassett.  In an April 2019 letter to Buffalo Police Commissioner Byron Lockwood, DA John Flynn wrote that Hassett, 34, suffered from “irremediable problems of credibility.” As a result, Flynn wrote, he would “no longer call Officer Hassett as a witness in any pending or future criminal action.”  In an arbitration proceeding that began two months later, Hassett’s employer, the City of Buffalo, sought to fire him.[...]

Posted 4 years ago

Jul 7

2020

Suspended cop has been disciplined a lot

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 Updated: 1:55 p.m. The Buffalo police lieutenant suspended last week for his vile insult of a woman filming him has previously been suspended four times during his career and been the subject of 36 misconduct complaints lodged by citizens or the department. Twelve involve inappropriate use of force; three have involved domestic incidents.  Investigative Post obtained the disciplinary records of Lt. Michael A. DeLong under the state Freedom of Information Law. His “disciplinary card” lists a 30 day suspension in November 2018 for an unspecified “domestic” incident; a one-day suspension the year before for a violation of procedures; a[...]

Posted 5 years ago

Jun 11

2020

Buffalo’s police watchdogs are toothless

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The City of Buffalo has three separate police oversight boards, but they’ve done little, if anything, to bring bad cops to heel.  One can’t. It’s an advisory panel with no power beyond its voice.  One won’t. It’s a subcommittee of the Common Council that seldom meets and does not investigate police misconduct.  And the third, a commission mandated by the city’s charter and controlled by Mayor Byron Brown, is hopelessly compromised. Of the three, the Police Advisory Board has the least power. But it has advanced far more substantial ideas about how to change policing in Buffalo than the tepid[...]

Posted 5 years ago

Jun 9

2020

School contract was failure waiting to happen

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To hear senior staff tell it, the Buffalo school district never should have gone through with a contract awarded to HarpData to provide wi-fi service to students in two low-income neighborhoods. The firm’s finances were suspect, according to the district’s purchasing director, and the district’s unusual decision to waive a performance bond put the school system in a precarious financial position should the project falter.  There were questions about the propriety of meetings between the vendor and district staff, including the chief technology officer, prior to the project being put out to bid. And there were doubts whether the project[...]

Posted 5 years ago

Jun 5

2020

Scant proof of “outside agitators”

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Politicians and police have been raising the spectre of “outside agitators” since the day protests began in Buffalo. For the most part, local media has amplified the message: Outsiders are slipping into town to incite violence and destruction.  But arrest records suggest that narrative is not true. And officials allow that much of the intelligence underlying the claim consists of posts on social media, not known as a reliable source of accurate information. There are other sources, authorities say, but they are unwilling to discuss them. And so the phrase — freighted with bigotry, according to UB professor Henry Louis[...]

Posted 5 years ago

May 21

2020

COVID-19 cited in spike of opioid overdoses

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Update: 3:15 p.m. There’s yet another consequence to the COVID-19 pandemic: More opioid users are dying of overdoses. Health authorities report that opioid use has not increased locally, but because of social isolation, more people are using alone, making it less likely someone is around to help them in the event they overdose.  Eighty-five people died in Erie County from presumed overdoses through the first four months of the year. That’s up from 48 during the same period last year and 64 in 2018. “They’re alone and we’re finding people too late,” said Cheryll Moore, director of the Erie County[...]

Posted 5 years ago

May 9

2020

Faulty logic behind refusal to release inmates

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Updated at 10:40 a.m. The argument prosecutors, and sometimes judges, make is that few inmates have tested positive for COVID-19, so it’s safe to keep them incarcerated. Authorities, however, are not testing many inmates, so they don’t know how healthy they really are. As a result, relatively few prisoners held in Erie County jails or the state’s 53 prisons who are deemed as infectious risks are being released. Only five of Erie County’s 528 inmates have been tested, and only 52 have been released due to COVID-19 concerns.  “The standard line from the DA’s office is that ‘We don’t have[...]

Posted 5 years ago

May 6

2020

OTB lands $3.2M intended for small business

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The Western Regional Off Track Betting Corp. is not to be mistaken for a small business. It’s a state-created public benefit corporation, owned by 15 counties and two cities, and charged with running legalized betting operations in western and central New York. It shares its profits with those local governments and the State of New York. Its employees, starting with its well compensated CEO, Henry Wojtaszek, are treated as public-sector employees, drawing, for example, a pension from the state.  And OTB reported some $3.1 million in cash reserves in its last audited financial statements. Nevertheless, OTB has managed to obtain[...]

Posted 5 years ago
Investigative Post