CW // Police Violence

Around 12:30 AM on July 9th, Buffalo Police Officers Ronald Ammerman and Jonathan Crawford pulled over Dae'von Roberts, a 25 year old Black man, for speeding and having tinted windows on the East Side of Buffalo. Roberts was driving a family members vehicle and had a 6 year old in the front seat.

Ammerman asked Roberts for his license which he explained he didn't have. He did provide the officer with a photo of his Georgia State ID on his phone. The officer went back to the police vehicle to check the ID. When the officer returned, he told Roberts that it wasn't a valid driver's license in New York State, even though Roberts had explained he lived in Georgia.

Ammerman then told Roberts that he was going to run his name a different way. Without consent for a search, the officer proceeded to reach his arm through the open drivers side window and opened Robert's door. The officer continued to hold the door open and told Roberts to put his phone down. As Roberts put his phone down he put the vehicle in drive. The officer continued to hold onto the door that he had just opened as Roberts accelerated. Ammerman faught Roberts for control of the vehicle, pulled out his gun while still holding on to the vehicle, and fired multiple rounds towards Roberts and in the same direction of the 6 year old child. Roberts tried to push Ammerman off as he fired. He then lunged towards the direction of the gun fire throwing himself in the opposite direction of the child into the middle of the street.

Roberts continued to bleed out in the street. He was transported to Erie County Medical Hospital where he was pronounced dead.

Outcome

Both officers are on mandatory administrative leave while the police investigates itself. The New York Attorney General’s Office of Special Investigation (OSI) has opened a special investigation into the killing of Dae'von.

Dae'von Roberts is half-brother of Jaylen Griffin who went missing in 2020. Despite a relentless search by family and community and being labeled a "runaway," Jaylen was found deceased in the attic of a home only 5 miles from his home with a history of dead bodies four years after he went missing. Jaylen appeared to have been deceased for a considerable amount of time. Jaylen and Dae'von’s mother, passed away in September from what is described as a “broken heart.”

Individuals organized outside of Hochstetter Hall at UB's North Campus to call for a ceasefire to the genocide in Gaza and for the University at Buffalo and the UB Foundation to divest from Israel. Specifically, SUNY Boycott, Divest, Sanction (BDS) “wants financial divestment of all stocks, funds, partnerships, endowments and other monetary instruments from companies complicit in human rights abuse in Palestine, an academic boycott of Israeli institutions and universities, and they demand financial investments into education on Palestinian culture, literature, social movements, history and diaspora.”

After arriving at Capen Hall, protesters began setting up tents in the lawn next to Hochstetter Hall. An officer speaking through a loudspeaker ordered the protesters to disassemble those tents and place them on a nearby sidewalk within 20 minutes or face arrest. They cited a university policy from 2020 that “prohibits indoor and outdoor encampments” and “overnight assemblies.” Three students driving a U-Haul van with additional wooden pallets for the encampment were ordered to drive away from the crowd.

In response to the order to break up the camp, protesters booed the officers, shouting that UB was “our school” and that they were “legally allowed to remain for 12 hours.” The protesters still complied with the police order and removed their tents, transitioning to a sit-in.

At 8 p.m., police ordered the protesters gathered outside of Hochstetter to disperse before 8:22 p.m. or face arrest. Shortly after, University Campus Police, New York State Police, Erie County Sheriff Deputies, Buffalo Police, Amherst Police, Kenmore Police, both town and city Tonawanda Police, Lancaster Police, Cheektowaga Police, Orchard Park Police, West Seneca Police and Evans Police descended on the encampment specifically targeting Muslim students who were wrapping up prayers. A UB spokesperson said that UB requested the outside officers come “as a precaution” and to “provide UPD with additional support if needed.”

Most protesters remained in place with locked arms as police closed in, chanting “free Palestine” and “end genocide.” Others were arrested and placed into marked police cars or onto a UB Stampede bus. Police chased the crowd toward Mary Talbert Way, continuing to make arrests. Multiple officers tackled protesters. One officer was filmed pushing a demonstrator’s face into the ground.

There was a ratio of at least 2:1 cop:protestor. A female student's hijab was unraveled as she was forcibly restrained. One protestor's head was slammed into a door and had to be treated at the hospital for his injuries. A 67 year old man also had to be treated at the hospital for an injury to his arm.

One non-UPD officer pushed a Spectrum editor attempting to film the arrests and told him to "get the f—k out of here." When the editor identified himself as media, the officer said, "I don't care."

A small number of protesters briefly barricaded themselves in Capen Hall, which houses many of UB’s administrative offices. A Stampede bus carrying roughly 10 detained protesters left campus around 9 p.m. The protesters inside could be heard chanting “free Palestine” as the bus drove by Hochstetter. After protesters had largely dispersed, police returned to the site of the attempted encampment and Founders Plaza. They confiscated belongings left at the site.

Outcome

UB claims 15 arrests were made. Protest organizers said that the actual number is 18. According to UB, the charges that were filed included:

• Loitering

• Trespass

• Disorderly conduct

• Resisting arrest

All but two individuals who did face charges, have had them dismissed.

Though there were no announced counter-protests, some Jewish Student Union members laughed at the pro-Palestine demonstrators. One did push-ups next to the protest. While police were arresting demonstrators, two individuals held up an Israeli flag. One shouted, “F—k those terrorists.”

One UB student said: "I feel like what they teach us in the class, and what they've taught us our whole lives about how we have freedom of speech, how we're in a democracy, just went out the window. We are out here trying to exercise our rights and those rights are being violated. It makes me feel angry against the president because I'm genuinely wondering, 'Where are you?' Your students are being violently arrested."

Another student said: "I'm hoping that at some point UB divests, I hope at some point that we see some change, but this is the situation right now and we have to fight somehow."

Buffalo Police Officers Joshua Slupinski and Andrew Lewis fired 20 rounds at Edward Holmes, hitting him twice after Holmes attempted to discharge a round and then lowered his 12-gauge shotgun. Officers told Holmes to put down the gun several times, but no other de-escalation tactics were used. The shotgun malfunctioned when Holmes tried to fire a round, becoming jammed in the receiver. It is believed that this is what led Holmes to lift the gun at a 45-degree angle in an attempt to clear the obstruction.

Holmes, who died at the scene, just minutes earlier had phoned the Ferry-Fillmore District police station just moments earlier from his cellphone to report an armed individual in the roadway.

Outcome

Both officers were been put on administrative leave. No other publicly available information has been released regarding disciplinary action.

Police officers responded to a call regarding an attempted suicide on Tonawanda St. Jon Battison, a 36-year-old man, was observed with a long pellet gun aimed at his own head. He never directed it towards the police.

Battison asked the officers whether they were going to shoot him given that he was holding a gun to his own head. Subsequently, the officers shouted at Battison to lower the pellet gun, and no further efforts at deescalation were undertaken.

One officer declared an intent to shoot. "OK," responded Battison, maintaining the pellet gun pointed at his own head.

Outcome

Battison was taken by ambulance to Erie County Medical Center, where he was listed in critical but stable condition and was held in police custody, with charges on criminal possession of weapons.

The officer was temporarily placed on administrative leave and faced no charges.

A 30-year-old man was allegedly attempting to leave a CVS store with items he didn't pay for. An off-duty Buffalo Police officer working as the store security guard shot the man, hitting him in the hand. He was transported to ECMC for what according to police were non-life-threatening injuries.

Outcome

No publicly available information has been released regarding disciplinary action.

Buffalo Police Officer's recklessly left a sniper rifle on a tripod unattended at the edge of a rooftop overlooking a St. Patrick's Day Parade, and it fell to the street after an alleged gust of wind. The rifle fell within feet of parade spectators. It was then secured by another officer and removed from the scene.

Outcome

Buffalo Police confirmed the incident saying it did happen, and that Internal Affairs will look into the matter. No other information regarding disciplinary action has been publicly released.

Buffalo Police Officer James McAndrew grabbed a 32-year-old man and shoved him into the side of a staircase, damaging the railings. McAndrew also pushed a woman who tried to get between him and the other man.

Outcome

McAndrew was arrested and temporarily suspended by the department without pay. He pled not guilty and was released on his own recognizance, according to court records. He was charged with two misdemeanors – fourth-degree criminal mischief and second-degree trespassing – as well as second-degree harassment.

James R. Kaska, a retired Buffalo police detective hid inside a woman's vehicle that was parked in a driveway. He then confronted the woman inside the car and as she tried to leave he pushed her back in the car, hit her arm, and held her wrists. He also took her cellphone away as she tried to call 911. Police had previously asked Kaska to leave the home following a domestic incident.

Outcome

The Hamburg police department investigated the case. Kaska was charged with multiple misdemeanors related to the domestic violence incident. He was arraigned on charges of second-degree menacing, fourth-degree criminal mischief and second-degree harassment before Hamburg Town Court Justice Carl W. Morgan.

13 days before a white supremacist lynched ten Black people in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Buffalo, Police Captain and head the Behavioral Health Team, Amber Beyer read aloud a Facebook post by a resident with a mental illness that the behavioral team was going to check on. In the post, the resident freely used a racial slur that targets Black people. Beyer yelled out the word as she read the post to members of her team,

In her racist rant, Beyer said Black cops were more likely to cheat on their wives than white cops and she’d be suspicious if she saw a Black man in her neighborhood. She claimed white police officers suffered post-traumatic stress disorder from working in Black neighborhoods, but Black officers did not, because they were more accustomed to violent crime. Beyer told Black officers they should try to understand how the criminality of Black people justified some racism. Beyer offered these opinions on May 2 in the Behavioral Health Team’s office in police headquarters on Court Street.

Captain Beyer did not apologize and said she had just been repeating what her husband, a patrol lieutenant, had stated.

Outcome

A lawsuit was filed in federal court by two Buffalo police officers and a civilian mental health clinician. The civil rights complaint is still being litigated.

Beyer was put on a 30-day unpaid suspension. She no longer heads the Behavioral Health Team and has been reassigned.

The Behavioral Health Team pairs police officers with mental health clinicians to respond to calls regarding people having mental health crises.

30-year-old Black man experienced a mental health crisis and was shot by two Buffalo police officers multiple times outside his apartment building on Hertel Avenue.

One woman was killed and others were injured in a high speed pursuit initiated by Buffalo Police that ended in a crash. Authorities say patrol officers began pursuing a suspicious vehicle at 3:45 a.m. near Sycamore and Fillmore avenues. The vehicle was traveling south on Bailey Avenue at an apparent high rate of speed, police say, when it allegedly ran a red light and was hit by another vehicle.

A female passenger in the vehicle was declared deceased at the scene.

Outcome

The Buffalo Police Department Internal Affairs Division and the Accident Investigation Unit investigated the incident. No publicly available information regarding the outcome of the investigation or disciplinary action has been released.

Starting the evening of January 10th, 2021 and continuing into the next morning, Buffalo Police accompanied bounty hunters in a raid of a duplex. The bounty hunters were there to search for Jake Reinhardt's brother, who jumped a $5,000 bail bond for misdemeanors in Pennsylvania. But his brother was not there, and he has never lived there.

Reinhardt, the owner of the duplex on Oakdale Place off Seneca Street, constantly asked the police officers and bounty hunters for a search warrant. At least one officer and bounty hunter told Reinhardt that a search warrant existed, but one was never presented to him. Reinhardt pleaded with one of the bounty hunters to drop his gun because his fiancé and 3-year-old child were awake and inside, but he refused.

With long guns drawn, the bounty hunters barreled through the front door and into Reinhardt’s first-floor home as he continued to demand that they show him a search warrant. The armed bounty hunters searched Reinhardt’s house, and pointed their guns at his then-pregnant fiancé while she held their three-year-old child. The toddler can be heard wailing in fear in body cam footage.

Reinhardt asked an officer for his name, to which the officer replied, “We don’t give our names anymore.”

Neither the bounty hunters nor the police department ever produced a search warrant. Instead, a bounty hunter handed Reinhardt a bail slip. It was at that time that Reinhardt realized the two armed men were not police officers, but bounty hunters.

Outcome

The raid resulted in an investigation by the Erie County District Attorney’s Office. The Buffalo Police Department also opened an internal investigation.

Buffalo Common Council President Darius Pridgen asked the city attorney’s office to provide council members with the police department’s policies and procedures that govern how officers should interact with bounty hunters. However, the city does not have any such policies, despite the 1998 death of a city police officer who was struck by a vehicle while assisting bounty hunters apprehend a suspect. Six months later the city adopted a policy with the intention of ensuring that armed, unlicensed bounty hunters never force their way into a home in the same way as the pair did in with the support of Buffalo Police.

Buffalo Police Capt. Jeff Rinaldo said that although he had not seen the body cam footage or spoken with any of the officers involved, a detective told him that none of the officers entered the house or conducted any kind of search. “They stepped into the front of the hallway there, but my understanding is that they never went into the upstairs or downstairs apartments,” Rinaldo said at the time.

A civil lawsuit against the city, Buffalo Police Officers, the Bail Bond company is still being litigated. The attorney for both families and Reinhardt’s mother, whose home was also searched by the bounty hunters earlier, said the body cam footage “clearly” shows two different officers crossing a Fourth Amendment threshold by entering hallways connected to the front and back doors and flashing their flashlights inside.

“Buffalo police were absolutely illegally in the house, unconstitutionally in the house without a search warrant,” the attorney for the family said. The attorney waited months for the city to release the body cam footage and eventually filed an Article 78 lawsuit to compel the city to release the footage.

“They had no search warrant,” the attorney said. “They had no warrant whatsoever and the police were backing [the bounty hunters] up.”

Bounty hunters are private citizens granted special privileges from an 1872 Supreme Court decision. Those privileges can exceed what law enforcement officers are legally allowed to do, such as extraditions across state lines and entering a fugitive’s home without a search warrant.

“And the police were backing them up and speaking up for them and telling the homeowner when he was begging for their help that these guys had a search warrant for the premises, which couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s a complete lie,” the attorney for the family said.

Dennis J. White, one of the bounty hunters, pled guilty to 10 misdemeanor charges. The judge sentenced White to 60 days in jail, and two years and 10 months on probation upon his release. In addition to that, White cannot have any contact with the victims for five years.

Buffalo Police Officers John Davidson and Andrew Moffett were suspended for making false statements following a drug arrest. The statements formed the basis for the false arrest of Morgan Eaton on charges of possession of 30 grams of cocaine with intent to distribute. The alleged cocaine was his fiance's medicine. All field and laboratory tests on the pills proved that the pills were not cocaine.

Willie Henley was shot in the abdomen by Buffalo police. "Put your bat down," calls out one officer with a gun pointed at Henley. "Nobody wants to hurt you." Henley, who continues to try to walk away from the group of more than half a dozen officers, some of whom have weapons drawn, responds, "I didn’t call y'all! I wasn’t doing nothing. I was by myself." Henley was known for carrying his baseball bat wherever he went, slept with it on street corners at night, and lined up for meals every day with it at the Buffalo City Mission. Those who regularly interacted with him described him as "very quiet, very peaceful."

On September 7, 2020 Alexis Rivera was shot while on Wyoming Ave. He subsequently spent several days at ECMC. When Buffalo Police responded to the scene of the shooting, Rivera’s vehicle was impounded. It was eventually searched, and inside, police say they found approximately 13 ounces of cocaine.

Later, prosecutors say Kevin Biggs, former Buffalo Police Detective donned police attire and falsely presented himself as an officer, entered the impound lot on Dart St. in order to obtain the vehicle. During that time, the Erie County District Attorney’s Office said Biggs provided forged paperwork while trying to acquire it.

Prosecutors also said that Biggs entered the Buffalo police garage on Seneca St. two additional times, but did not have permission to be there. During one occasion, they say he had bolt cutters.

Rivera was accused of going to the police garage with the same falsified paperwork allegedly used by Biggs after Biggs left on one of those days.

Outcome

Kevin Biggs, 51, the former detective who also served as an East Aurora village trustee, faced charges of criminal trespassing, criminal possession of a forged instrument, criminal impersonation and possession of burglar tools.

Alexis Rivera, 25, was charged with criminal possession of a controlled substance in the first and seventh degrees, criminal use of drug paraphernalia and two counts of forgery.

After their arraignments, Biggs left on his own recognizance, but Rivera had to post $75,000 bail. Biggs’ charges were non-qualifying offenses for bail.

An off-duty police officer, Richard Hy, hit and subded a Black man having a mental health crisis until other police arrived. No charges were filed and Hy was not suspended.

Buffalo police order Black woman not to walk on same side of the street as white men

Buffalo Police sit in their cars looking around clueless while a pair of armed white supremacists block traffic shouting racial slurs.

CW: Lieutenant Michael DeLong, was suspended after being videotaped directing a vile, misogynist insult at a woman outside a convenience store. DeLong called the woman a “disrespectful little fucking cunt” when she questioned how police were handling a man in distress outside the store who has a history of drug and mental health issues. The woman taking the video was upset about the size of the police response to the scene. DeLong was suspended the day after the June 28 incident for 30 days without pay for his insult, then, under state law, was returned to the payroll while remaining under suspension. He was paid about $63,000 while awaiting an arbitration hearing in which the city was expected to ask that DeLong be further disciplined or fired.

On June 24th, 2020, a handful of people were gathered at Niagara Square as part of a multi-day peaceful protest in response to police brutality. While exercising their First Amendment right to peacefully assemble, Buffalo police officers arrived at Niagara Square around 2:00 am and began unlawfully arresting the protestors.

Outcome

Each protestor was charged with violations of two City of Buffalo ordinances, laws or regulations, section 309-15[A], sleeping in "any park or park approach," and 309-25[A], remaining in a park, playground, or public school ground beyond open hours, a non-criminal offense punishable as a "Class C fine in the amount of $52.50."

Niagara Square is neither a "park," "park approach," "playground," nor a "public school ground" as defined in the Buffalo City Code, such that the sections 309-15[A] and 309-25[A] would apply to the protestors and prohibit their otherwise protected right of assembly at Niagara Square. Subsequently, in Buffalo City Court, all charges were dismissed for facial insufficiency.

The case was settled for $31,5000.

According to Buffalo News, forty-seven out of fifty-seven arrests made during George Floyd / BLM protests in the summer of 2020 were either dismissed or "given adjournments" and were considered for dismissal. Very few went all the way through court proceedings.