Posted in DailyPost,News Last summer, Buffalo Police Officer Richard Hy — a.k.a. the “Angry Cop,” notorious for posting satirical videos online — is accused of letting his anger get the best of him. In a lawsuit filed yesterday in state Supreme Court, Curtis Lee Dean, of Buffalo, claims Hy intentionally backed his patrol car into Dean’s motorcycle at the corner of Delaware Avenue and Edward Street in June 2021. Dean was riding with a group of motorcyclists, whom Hy decided to pursue several blocks through the city’s West Side, according to a WGRZ News report on the incident.  Some riders ..read more

Posted in DailyPost,Monday Morning Read Subscribe to WeeklyPost and you’ll get Jim Heaney’s recommended reading – and more – a day early. Well, I suppose we should talk about Matt Araiza, the so-called Punt God drafted, signed and given a roster spot by our Buffalo Bills. It turns out he’s also an accused rapist. And, as a result, a former Bill, as of Saturday night. The obvious questions are when did the Bills find out about the accusation and how could they have allowed the situation to get as far as it did? Team officials initially claimed they did a thorough investigation, but the accuser ..read more

Posted in DailyPost,News A pot growing operation in South Buffalo has received two major subsidies from economic development agencies. The first, in January, came from the New York Power Authority, which approved an allocation of 2.9 megawatts of discounted hydropower. A NYPA spokesman told Investigative Post the authority has not calculated the value of that power. The second subsidy came Wednesday from the Erie County Industrial Development Agency, which approved tax breaks worth $3.1 million over 15 years.  It’s the first subsidy the IDA has awarded to a marijuana producer and the seco ..read more

Posted in Analysis,Co-produced with WGRZ,DailyPost,News Carl Paladino, who says he’ll be “a voice for the people” in Congress, waited until the Friday before election day to tell voters how rich he is. Spoiler alert: He’s very rich. Paladino’s income was at least $4.5 million last year, according to a personal financial disclosure he filed last Friday with the U.S. House Ethics Committee. The outer limit of his income was seven times greater. In addition, he listed assets worth as much as $86 million. The Republican real-estate developer was a month late in filing the disclosure statement, req ..read more

Posted in DailyPost,Monday Morning Read Here’s the latest recommended reading – and this week, viewing – from Jim Heaney. Subscribe to his Sunday email newsletter and you’ll get the news a day earlier, along with a recap of Investigative Post’s reporting from the previous week. Henry Wojtaszek, the embattled CEO of the embattled Western Regional Off-Track Betting Corp., took the unusual step of answering questions from a reporter last week. He appeared Wednesday on WGRZ’s 5:30 p.m. newscast. Michael Wooten asked the right questions and Wojtaszek, well, let’s just say if he was Pinocchio ..read more

Posted in DailyPost,News Buffalo’s police union is making headway in its efforts to put a lid on the release of officers’ disciplinary records. Last Friday, lawyers for the Buffalo Police Benevolent Association filed a lawsuit against the City of Buffalo, asking a judge to order the city to honor an arbitrator’s decision curtailing the public’s right to learn about allegations of police misconduct. If successful, the lawsuit would require the city to destroy all records of a misconduct complaint against an officer unless the department’s Internal Affairs Division finds the officer guilty.  ..read more

Posted in DailyPost,Organization News A state Supreme Court judge has dismissed a libel lawsuit brought by a Buffalo developer against Investigative Post and reporter Dan Telvock.  State Supreme Court Judge Mark Montour also ruled developer James Sweizy and his company Greenleaf Development & Construction failed to prove Telvock’s story, published in 2017, contained any false information and dismissed a related “injurious falsehood” claim.  The 2017 report documented how officials at SUNY Buffalo State failed to follow usual procurement rules in dealing with Greenleaf regarding c ..read more

Posted in Monday Morning Read Consider this food for thought to start your week. Available, by the way, Sunday mornings, along with a summary of what Investigative Post published the previous week, in an email newsletter. It’s free, so, hey. Subscribe here. The New York Times sizes up the race between Carl Paladino and Nick Langworthy.  The Times also writes about how the attack on Salman Rushdie has shaken the Chautauqua Institution.   Ken Kruly, in his Politics and Other Stuff, details all the money spent by local companies and nonprofits to lobby officials in state gover ..read more

Posted in In-Depth,Organization News The hiring of I’Jaz Ja’ciel completes the rebuilding of Investigative Post’s reporting staff. A Buffalo native, Ja’ciel comes to Investigative Post from Spectrum News, where she was a multimedia, general assignment journalist. Before that, she was a weekend anchor for WBFO. Ja’ciel, 29, earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism at SUNY Buffalo State, winning numerous awards for academic excellence. She went on to earn a master’s degree from Buffalo State in data science and analytics. “I’Jaz brings a lot of skills, including broadcast production and data-bas ..read more

Posted in DailyPost,News It took the Niagara County Industrial Development Agency less than a minute Wednesday to approve $124 million in tax breaks for Amazon to bring 1,000 warehouse jobs to the Town of Niagara. Amazon, one of the world’s largest and wealthiest companies, plans to open a 3-million-square-foot warehouse along Lockport Road, which will be a “first mile” distribution center where bulk shipments of goods will arrive and be sorted and packed for shipment to other Amazon facilities in the region. The goods will make their way to customers from those other facilities. The Niagara ..read more