Categories for News

Mar 27

2018

Progress on Buffalo police accreditation

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 The Buffalo Police Department is getting closer to obtaining professional accreditation from the state, according to police representatives who spoke Tuesday at the Common Council’s Police Oversight Committee.   As Investigative Post reported last year, the City Charter requires the police to maintain professional accreditation, a good housekeeping stamp of approval that ensures departments are following contemporary best practices. Over 150 departments across New York are accredited with the state’s Law Enforcement Accreditation Program While the Buffalo police is updating its policies and procedures to comply with the state program  in areas like administration and property maintenance, changes to[...]

Posted 7 years ago

Mar 22

2018

No job search for Buffalo police commissioner

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 Mayor Byron Brown didn’t search for job applicants or interview any candidates other than Byron Lockwood before he nominated him to succeed Daniel Derenda as police commissioner in February. Selecting a police commissioner without conducting a job search is not standard practice for large municipalities. Other cities take their candidate hunts national by posting on professional police association job forums, like the one provided by the International Association of Chiefs of Police. In towns like Amherst and Cheektowaga, applicants take a civil service exam and only the three top-scoring candidates are considered for the position by the town boards.[...]

Posted 7 years ago

Feb 28

2018

State audit challenges UB Foundation spending

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The University at Buffalo Foundation spent almost $40,000 on questionable entertainment expenses, operated for three years under an expired contract with the campus, and lacks policies to ensure contracts are competitively bid, according to an audit released yesterday by the state comptroller’s office. The foundation also paid the salaries of two retired university staff members who returned to state employment, while they were also collecting state pensions – allowing them to circumvent state caps on “double-dipping,” the report found.   The private UB Foundation is technically separate from the public university, but has long faced pressure to be more transparent[...]

Posted 7 years ago

Feb 9

2018

Buffalo police disbanding troubled Strike Force

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The Buffalo Police Department is disbanding a special unit that ostensibly targets gang, guns and drug activity in the face of criticism over what some regard as its heavy-handed tactics. Police officials confirmed the 19 officers and supervisors in the unit, known as Strike Force, will be reassigned effective March 12. The fate of a related operation known as the Housing Unit, which operates in and around the city’s public housing projects, is not known. Investigative Post in September published a report that documented misconduct on the part of Strike Force and Housing Unit officers. Its reporting turned up ten[...]

Posted 7 years ago

Jan 22

2018

State: Toxins in Wheatfield landfill contained

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 State environmental regulators concluded Monday that tests show a landfill in Wheatfield that once held Love Canal waste is not contaminating neighboring properties. The findings run counter to claims made by plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit against the Town of Wheatfield, which owns the landfill, and seven companies believed to have dumped there. The state Department of Environmental Conservation declared the landfill a Superfund site three years ago after the removal of  80 dump-truck loads of Love Canal waste buried there in 1968. The DEC had said the landfill remained contaminated from other dumping that occurred from 1955 to[...]

Posted 7 years ago

Jan 8

2018

Buffalo Billion emails highlight political giving

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A list of hundreds of emails from a key figure in the Buffalo corruption case underscores the role of campaign contributions in the scandal. Lobbyist Todd Howe repeatedly emailed his clients – including executives at LPCiminelli who are facing charges of bid-rigging – about giving money to Gov. Andrew Cuomo and his then running mate, Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul. The index of emails, submitted into evidence by defense lawyers at the end of December but withdrawn just days later, includes only their subject lines, not the full text of the messages or the dates they were sent. Still, it offers[...]

Posted 7 years ago

Dec 21

2017

A Buffalo Billion bust in Syracuse

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 Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s original plan to redevelop the former Republic Steel site in South Buffalo included Soraa, a California based company that manufactures high efficiency lights. Soraa and Silevo, a solar panel manufacturer, were going to occupy a factory at Riverbend, built at taxpayer expense under the Buffalo Billion program. SolarCity, owned by Elon Musk, bought out Silevo and the state and Soraa decided to locate the lighting plant in Syracuse. Some $90 million in state funds were spent to build the factory in exchange for a promise of 420 jobs. Like the SolarCity project, the Syracuse plant was ensnared[...]

Posted 7 years ago

Dec 14

2017

Police refused to cooperate in death probe

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A review of internal Buffalo police records and state law raises questions over the refusal of two officers to cooperate with the attorney general’s office as it investigated the death of Wardel Davis during an encounter with the police in February. The two officers involved, Nicholas Parisi and Todd McAlister, refused to be interviewed by the attorney general’s office about the incident unless they were interviewed together. That’s despite a police department policy that states all employees have a “duty” to “extend their fullest cooperation” to outside agencies investigating possible officer misconduct. A spokesperson for the attorney general declined to comment on[...]

Posted 7 years ago
Investigative Post