Categories for News

Jan 24

2017

Pridgen wants Buffalo police accredited

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Updated Jan. 25, 2017  Common Council President Darius Pridgen proposed a resolution Tuesday asking the Buffalo Police Department to seek accreditation as a means of bringing about improvements in the department. It was unanimously approved. As reported last week by Investigative Post, accreditation by outside evaluators is a long-ignored requirement of the City Charter. The resolution also calls for the police to provide updates to the Council on its application for accreditation. “That sounds very, very important to have the state or someone who then has oversight and then can come in and look at where there are pieces where we miss,”[...]

Posted 8 years ago

Dec 14

2016

City Hall in no rush to improve police training

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Buffalo officials are in no hurry to address the police department’s lack of training in tactics that many other cities have deployed in response to police shootings of African Americans in Ferguson and elsewhere. In fact, Mayor Byron Brown said he is satisfied with the status quo. He said he sees no need to improve training programs that show officers how to de-escalate potentially volatile situations and make restrained use of force in dealing with citizens. “We are very pleased that when you look at what’s happening here in Buffalo versus other parts of the country, we are not experiencing[...]

Posted 8 years ago

Nov 22

2016

Water authority’s disinformation campaign

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Investigative Post’s report two weeks ago showed how the Erie County Water Authority cut corners in its sampling program for lead in drinking water. The water authority responded to our report with a campaign that included an email to customers, posts to Twitter and paid advertising on Facebook. The authority’s underlying message: The water is more pure than many brands of bottled water. Therefore, there is nothing to be concerned about. We fact checked the authority’s campaign and found numerous misleading statements and unsubstantiated claims, some of which we discuss in this report aired Tuesday with our partners at WGRZ.  “They’re trying[...]

Posted 8 years ago

Oct 18

2016

City Hall acts on lead poisoning

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The Common Council passed legislation Tuesday to address chipping and peeling lead paint hazards in rental units following years of reporting by Investigative Post on Buffalo’s serious lead poisoning problem. The new legislation requires landlords and property managers to: Permit inspectors to check for lead hazards on all rental units built before 1978. Certify that rental units built before 1978 are free of lead paint hazards by submitting a compliance letter from a licensed inspector. Disclose to renters that lead paint could be present in apartments built before 1978. Attend an accredited course on how to safely renovate, repair and paint[...]

Posted 8 years ago

Oct 11

2016

‘Billion mastermind Kaloyeros resigns

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The fall from grace is just about complete for Alain Kaloyeros. The so-called “nano-tech guru” who Gov. Andrew Cuomo has praised as a “near genius” has resigned as CEO of SUNY Polytechnic Institute. His success building a nano-technology sector in the Albany area prompted Cuomo to put Kaloyeros in charge of his initiative to revitalize the upstate economy through a series a big-ticket projects in Buffalo, Dunkirk, Rochester, Syracuse and Utica. But reporting by Investigative Post into the awarding of a lucrative contract to LPCiminelli to build a factory for SolarCity triggered investigations by U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara and State Attorney General Eric[...]

Posted 8 years ago

Sep 28

2016

Bharara: Support investigative journalism

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U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara on Tuesday acknowledged the role reporters played in bringing possible corruption in the Buffalo Billion program to his attention and underscored the importance of investigative reporting in cleaning up state government. Bharara told an audience attending an event sponsored by City & State New York that he launched his probe after the problems were first pointed out in the local press. “That case got started because journalists in Buffalo and elsewhere started to write that there were shenanigans they believe that were going on with the bidding of contracts in Buffalo,” Bharara said. “And you know what we[...]

Posted 8 years ago

Sep 22

2016

Investigative Post’s Buffalo Billion reporting

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Gov. Cuomo’s signature Buffalo Billion initiative was mired in corruption and bid-rigging, according to a federal complaint unsealed Thursday. The complaint alleges what has long been suspected: the RFP for Buffalo developers to build the $750 million factory for SolarCity was designed with one company, LPCiminelli, in mind. SUNY Polytechnic president Alain Kaloyeros, lobbyist Todd Howe, and executives at Buffalo-based LPCiminelli worked together to “secretly tailor” the required qualifications for a developer in Buffalo so that LPCiminelli would be guaranteed to win the work, according to the complaint. A similar pattern of collaboration is alleged to have taken place between Kaloyeros, Howe and[...]

Posted 8 years ago

Sep 15

2016

Arbetter on Cuomo’s “pathology’ of self-interest

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Susan Arbetter has built The Capitol Pressroom into an influential interview program with a daily audience of 100,000 listeners by practicing what she described Tuesday as “broccoli dipped in chocolate” journalism. Speaking to a near sell-out crowd at the Burchfield Penney Art Center, Arbetter said her approach – tackling serious subjects with a dash of flavor and humor – gives voters the information they need in a way they can digest. “We need to eat vegetables to have real democracy,” she said, “but people are opting to only eat dessert,” referring to the gluttony of media consumption preoccupied with sports,[...]

Posted 8 years ago
Investigative Post