Buffalo Police officers forcibly removed from a vehicle and mercilessly beat Robert Closs, a 78 year old man who was well known to the Buffalo Police Department as a citizen with mental health problems. Closs died approximately three weeks later from blunt force trauma caused by the brutality.

Police say security from the Wegmans on Amherst Street reported a shoplifter at 11:20 p.m. An on-duty lieutenant who happened to be in the store was informed the suspect had ran.

Approximately eight minutes later, officers located the suspect, 47-year-old Marcus Neal, across the street. They chased Neal on foot to Gladstone Street. Police said Neal ran into a yard and climbed up onto a flat-roof garage. Multiple officers pursued him up there. According to police, once up there, he produced a knife but refused multiple requests to drop it. They claim that Neal then charged the officers with the knife, and one of the officers opened fire, striking him.

Neal’s family disputes the conclusion that nothing could have been done to spare his life and questions whether the events of that freezing night unfolded exactly as police have said.

Neal was transported to Erie County Medical Center and immediately put into surgery. He later died from his injuries.

Outcome

Because of the presence of an alleged knife, Neal’s death was not investigated by the New York State Attorney General, which, under Executive Order No. 147 acts as a special prosecutor in deaths of unarmed citizens by police.

The Erie County District Attorney’s Office did investigate. Erie County District Attorney John Flynn said that the shooting was justified. No charges were filed against the officer.

CW: In response to a 911 call of a man with a gun at about 3:05 a.m, Buffalo Police officer Elmur Karadzhayev shot and killed Rafael “Pito” Rivera as he was running away. Karadzhayev was placed on administrative leave. Erie County District Attorney John Flynn announced that there would be no charges filed against Karadzhayev after a nearly three-month investigation. The family of Pito filed a civil lawsuit. The City of Buffalo, the Buffalo Police Department, Officer Karadzhayev, and an unknown officer were all named as defendants in the lawsuit.

On Friday, March 30, 2018, Susan LoTempio, died after being hit by a Buffalo Police Department patrol vehicle. Officer Daniel Ahearn was responding to a call and did not have his patrol car's flashing lights or siren activated when he hit Ms. LoTempio with the vehicle.

Outcome

No criminal charges or disciplinary action was taken against Officer Ahearn.

A civil action was filed against the City of Buffalo, the Buffalo Police Department, Officer Ahearn, Adamson Industries Corp, Central Dodge Inc, Central Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram Of Raynham, and Gamber-Johnson LLC. The NYS Office of the Attorney General investigated the death and determined that Ahearn was not criminally liable. The remaining parties settled for $200,000 plus $71,000.69 in attorney fees.

Noah Giusiana attended a late-night film at a Regal Cinema in Buffalo, NY with his younger brother. While exiting the movie theater, Giusiana and his brother were “horsing around” and wrestling outside the theater. Giusiana was confronted by a Regal Cinema assistant manager and a brief altercation ensued.

Seconds later, Noah Giusiana was grabbed by off-duty Buffalo Police Officer Mark Andrzejak, who was working as a Regal Cinema security officer at the time. Officer Andrzejak then slammed Giusiana to the sidewalk. An eyewitness heard Giusiana’s head crack when it struck the sidewalk and said that he appeared unconscious as he was lying still, facedown on the ground.

The Buffalo Police department arrived at the scene and placed Giusiana under arrest. The arresting officer at the scene, Ronald J. Ammerman testified that he was never told Giusiana’s head struck the sidewalk. Officer Ammerman’s testimony also revealed that Mark Andrzejak gave false statements regarding Mr. Giusiana’s actions.

AMR attendants asked Giusiana a series of questions and then cleared him to be taken by the Buffalo Police to Central Booking. A cellblock video shows that Noah Giusiana vomited in a sink and slowly slumped to the floor of his cell in Buffalo Police Central Booking around 6:44 AM on the morning of his arrest. Shortly after 9:00 AM, Mr. Giusiana was found unresponsive, lying on the floor of this holding cell. An ambulance was then called and Giusiana was rushed to Erie County Medical Center, where he underwent emergency brain surgery.

Noah Giusiana survived after undergoing emergency brain surgery. However, he is nearly 50% blind, has trouble with his memory, and suffers from other cognitive impairments.

Outcome

After doctors said Noah Giusiana might not live, police charged Jonah Giusiana on June 8, 2017, with felony assault, “for recklessly causing injury” to his brother. Police arrested Jonah while he was visiting his brother at the hospital. An Erie County grand jury reviewed the case, but did not indict Jonah Giusiana. The violations against both brothers were also dropped.

The Buffalo Police Internal Affairs unit began an investigation into whether Andrzejak had used unnecessary force and caused Giusiana’s brain injury. Andrzejak was “exonerated” by the police department. Andrzejak remains a police officer.

Noah Giusiana sued the City of Buffalo, the Buffalo Police Department, seven police officers, Regal Cinemas, off-duty officer Mark Andrzejak, AMR, and two ambulance attendants. Mr. Giusiana’s lawsuit was because the defendants falsely arrested him, negligently caused his injuries, denied him medical care in a timely manner, committed medical malpractice, and failed to train their employees properly.

The Buffalo Common Council approved the payment to Giusiana for $1.05 Million. The remainder of the $2.9 million settlement came from other defendants.

CW: Officers beat and fatally shot Jose Hernandez-Rossy during an unlawful, racially-motivated traffic stop.

CW: Mohammad Ismail bought a dilapidated house at a city auction of tax delinquent properties with the hopes of renovating it and turning it into a home for his wife and four children who were in Brooklyn. The previous owner was a Buffalo police officer who showed up with another police officer one day and threatened to arrest Ismail if he didn't leave. The dispute has led to two internal affairs probes by the BPD and a lawsuit by Ismail against the police officers and the Buffalo Police Department.

Buffalo Police officer Joseph Hassett was recorded on camera assaulting Timothy Stanton Jr. on March 18, 2017. Stanton was taken to ECMC for a head injury and a cut on his forehead that required stitches. The Erie County District Attorney's Office and the Buffalo Police Department both said they didn't learn about the incident until video of the confrontation was requested by Stanton's attorney. Hassett was charged with two counts of third-degree assault, official misconduct, offering a false instrument for filing and making a punishable false written statement in connection to an incident that happened in March 2017.

Prosecutors argued this was excessive use of force, but the Judge disagreed, dismissing all criminal charges. BPD Internal Affairs opened an investigation on May 26, 2017 and officially suspended Officer Hassett on May 30, 2017, according to Commissioner Daniel Derenda. Hassett was suspended for 30 days without pay.

Officers Todd C. McAlister and Nicholas J. Parisi tried to handcuff Wardel “Meech” Davis outside a house on the West Side. One of the officers admitted he punched Meech during the struggle, after which the 20-year-old stopped breathing. Meech died a short time later, and even though his death was ruled a homicide, medical records say he died from pre-existing breathing problems that were exacerbated during the struggle.

The officers were not charged and remain on the force. The attorney general said there was "no evidence" to contradict the officers' accounts because there were no witnesses and no video evidence such as body camera footage or dash camera footage. He added that there was "real need of reform" not only with the police department, but also with the Erie County Medical Examiner’s office, particularly because medical officials insisted on checking with police before making their medical rulings on the death.

James Kistner was having breakfast with his sons at his Buffalo East Side home on New Year’s Day 2017 when he noticed police at his apartment across the street.

They finished breakfast before Kistner walked outside to find out what might have caused the police presence at the apartment on Schmarbeck Avenue.

Kistner walks a few feet toward a second police cruiser that begins to back up. He gets within a foot and he throws out his arms to brace for what was about to happen: the cruiser runs into him, forcibly knocking him to the ground. No one moves. None of the officers run to check on Kistner. More than 15 seconds pass before officers get out and walk toward Kistner, who is lying on the ground yelling at his son to call 911.

Earl, Kistner’s son, runs over, sees that his dad is on the ground with his legs pushed out between the two wheels of the left side of the SUV and then walks back to the sidewalk to call 911.

Not only was Kistner struck by a police SUV and injured, but officers surrounding Kistner’s son while he called 911, shoved him around and took his phone. Police cancelled the ambulance call. An officer picks up Kistner off the ground, they cuff him and detain him in the second police cruiser that returned to the scene. Police charged Kistner with felony criminal mischief and a disorderly conduct violation.

Officers transported Kistner to ECMC, where they chained him to a gurney, and left to speak with medical staff. The officers tried to get Kistner admitted in the psych ward at ECMC, claiming he attacked the police cruiser. Kistner said the nurse told him that the officers claimed he jumped onto the police cruiser. ECMC did not admit Kistner, so police brought him to central booking where he was fingerprinted, searched and photographed. He was charged with felony criminal mischief in the third degree for the damage to the mirror and disorderly conduct.

Kistner thought he would get an appearance ticket for some violation, but the officers would eventually bring him back to ECMC to try to get him admitted a second time. Kistner again denied to a doctor that he attacked a police car and said he has video to prove it. The doctor called a family friend of the Kistners, who confirmed that the video shows Kistner being struck by the police car.

Less than an hour later, ECMC nurses told Kistner he was free to leave.

Kistner’s attorney said the officers conspired to cover up the incident to avoid discipline for hitting Kistner with a police cruiser.

Outcome

Prosecutors dismissed the charges against Kistner once they saw the video evidence.

Kistner’s attorney said as far as he knows the officers were never disciplined.

Kistner said he filed a complaint with internal affairs but was ignored. So, he decided to sue the City of Buffalo, the police commissioner and police officers Lauren McDermott, Jenny Velez, Karl Schultz, Kyle Moriarty and David T. Santana. Pending Common Council approval, James and Earl Kistner will be receiving $1,100,000 as a result of the settlement from the lawsuit.

While off-duty, Buffalo Police officer Richard Hy harassed, head-butted, choked, and used a racial slur against a person who he felt was playing music too loudly. Hy was out partying with an off-duty West Seneca police officer when the assault happened.

Outcome

Hy appeared in West Seneca Court on a misdemeanor criminal charge of choking and a harassment violation. During his arraignment before West Seneca Town Justice Jeffrey M. Harrington, Hy pleaded not guilty to both counts.

Hy took a plea deal for Disorderly Conduct and was sentenced to 50 hours community services.

Hy was suspended while the case was pending and returned to work at this conclusion.

Four officers followed Arthur Jordan into the PCS Metro store and told him he was wanted for questioning. When Jordan said he wouldn’t go with the officers, who lacked both a warrant and probable cause for an arrest, the officers closed in on him, sprayed him in the eyes with copious amounts of pepper spray, punched him in the head and eventually restrained him enough to perform a search.

CW: A cellblock attendant grabbed Shaun P. Porter and slammed his face into a door, causing him to collapse and strike his face on the floor and bleed profusely. Meanwhile two Buffalo police officers did nothing as they stood by and watched. After dragging Porter down the hall and hitting him in the head again, he was placed in a restraint chair without medical treatment for about an hour and 45 minutes.

Richard Hy wrestled 29-year-old Parris Stevens to the ground and put his hands around his neck. Hy struggled on top of Stevens for several minutes as a woman repeatedly screamed, “You’re choking him!” and said the man’s eyes were bugging out from the cop’s force. Several other officers surrounded Hy and helped drag him from the sidewalk into a police vehicle.

Hy later claimed that he was not trying to hurt Stevens and was trying to save his life because he had swallowed drugs. Stevens was taken to the hospital and voluntarily threw up the drugs.

Outcome

BPD started an internal affairs investigation into itself. IA found the charges were unfounded and no disciplinary action was taken.

Officer Beyer and Officer Hy viciously attacked Gregory Ramos, dragged him into the yard threw him into a police car. Then Beyer approached Ramos laughing and told him that if his eyeballs fell out, that she would tape them back to his face, and that would be the only medical attention he would receive. Then Officer Beyer and Hy drove Ramos to a parking lot where he sat handcuffed for several hours until they drove him to central booking.

Officers armed with guns and a no-knock search warrant raided the wrong home of Maisha Drayton, then a senior director of staff development at the Evergreen Association, a nonprofit health care organization.

Police left all the doors open when they departed, Maisha Drayton testified. Snow from boots were on the floor throughout the house. The warrant left by officers was full of misspelled words, along with the name of a suspected drug dealer Drayton and her kids had never heard before.

Detectives had obtained the search warrant for the home based on the word of an informant facing unspecified criminal charges. The informant told City Court Judge Amy Martoche, who signed the warrant, that she was hoping to “work off some of the charges” when she told police that a man named George lived at the house and had crack stashed inside.

Officers during depositions said they watched the house at least twice before serving the warrant but didn’t see Tariq, then 10, or his brother Xavier, then 16, go to school each morning, nor did they see Maisha Drayton or her husband, who worked as a graphic designer at the Buffalo News, go to work each day and come home each night.

They also didn’t see George, the suspected crack dealer, but that wasn’t cause for concern, police testified during proceedings in the lawsuit. They believed the house was used to stash drugs, not as a point of sale, and so the lack of visible drug activity wasn’t considered unusual for a suspected drug dealer.

The Draytons owned the home where they’d lived for seven years, and police knew it. They also knew that utilities were in Maisha Drayton’s name. That, too, didn’t cause police to question whether the informant had told the truth about George living there.

In seeking a search warrant, Detective Earl Perrin told Judge Martoche that he knew about George and the house before the informant told police that the Drayton home contained cocaine. He asked that the warrant be no-knock because people inside the house had guns. Kirkham wrote that Mayhook wasn’t candid when he told the judge, without corroborating the informant’s information, that the house was used to stash crack sold elsewhere.

“This statement among other representations made to the court at the in-camera hearing for the search warrant constitutes material misrepresentations of the facts that led to a finding of probable cause [to search the house],” Kirkham wrote.

Officers involved in the raid admitted no mistakes during depositions.

Outcome

Due to the raid, Maisha Drayton, who was in underwear when police rousted her from bed, suffers from post-traumatic stress syndrome and has experienced panic attacks and vertigo as well as migraine headaches, her lawyers say. Xavier suffered sprained wrists from being handcuffed, injuries to his arms and shoulders and has also experienced emotional injuries, according to the lawsuit. Tariq, who visited a therapist, suffered emotional injuries and has had nightmares, according to the family’s attorneys.

The Buffalo Common Council settled the Draytons’ lawsuit against police for $255,000.

Buffalo police officer confronted Devon Ford on Chippewa Street slammed him onto a car, took him to the ground and then hit him six times with a nightstick.

"I just remember being on my back, saying 'I didn't do anything, I didn't do anything," Ford told a federal court jury.

Outcome

Krug was temporarily suspended. A jury found Buffalo Police Officer Krug not guilty of two counts of deprivation of constitutional rights in the November 2014 use-of-force case.

In September 2014, Hassett and his partner, John Beyer, apprehended 26-year-old Keith Worthy at a gas station at the corner of South Park Avenue and Louisiana Street. The officers then took Worthy and his car into the nearby Commodore Perry housing projects, according to sources who have viewed the investigations that followed.

The officers charged Worthy with trespassing on public housing property, according to the incident report. They also charged Worthy with leaving his car — which had been at a gas pump before they arrested him and moved it — unattended and blocking a roadway.

Outcome

All the charges against Worthy eventually were dropped.

The Internal Affairs investigation into the incident took four years to resolve. The finding: The complaint was “not sustained.” Neither officer was punished.

On July 29 2014, Buffalo Narcotics officers and the SWAT team stormed a West Seneca residence on Edson Street at 6 am in the morning. The residents were sleeping with their house-dog, a nine month old pit-bull puppy named Rocky, who was beloved both in the house and within the community. Rocky had been trained and loved from the time of his birth, was very well socialized, and did not have a mean bone in his body.

In fact, medical records show that despite the officers frightening method of entry into the residence, all Rocky did was stretch his legs at the foot of Joseph Smith, one of his owners' bed. Photos, police reports, and medical records show that two narcotics officers Detectives Joseph Smith and Shawn Adams shot Rocky numerous times with multiple firearms from over 10 feet away as the innocent dog stretched on Smith's bed.

Outcome

The police found a small amount of drug residue and marijuana in the cubbies of a bedroom and charged Joseph Smith, whose dog was blown up at his feet. Smith’s attorney, after a long legal battle, was able to get the charges against his client dismissed. Despite the thousands of dollars that have gone into this worthless prosecution, the DA doubled downed to protect the dog killers and refilled the charges against Smith

Air National Guardsman William C. Sager Jr. was gravely injured when he was pushed down a flight of stairs by Molly's Pub bar manager Jeffrey Basil. When the incident happened at Molly's, two off-duty Buffalo Police officers were there -- Adam O'Shei and Robert Eloff. Officer Eloff helped drag the unconscious Sager out of the bar after the push and handcuffed him at Basil’s request. After spending weeks in a coma at the hospital, Sager died. He was 28.

The incident occurred during a sad chapter of Buffalo history during which members of the Buffalo Police force were not only allowed to have side jobs working security for the local bars, but they were actually encouraged to do so. Despite knowing that this system created a "breakdown in the chain of command," the City's Police Commissioner felt that having visible police stationed throughout the city's bars provided an added police presence at no cost to the taxpayers.

This policy decision was longstanding, and had produced a plethora of citizen complaints from bar patrons. The practice created a conflict of interest for the off duty police, who developed an allegiance to personnel at the bars they were supposed to be policing. The result was a long list of complaints, including underage drinking, bouncers getting away with being overly aggressive, and in some cases, the off-duty police themselves using excessive force. Although the Police Commissioner acknowledged that he considered ending the program prior to May 11,2014' that suggestion was opposed by the rank and file as well as the police union, and the policy was therefore allowed to continue. After the death of William Sager, the Commissioner terminated the policy. However, the practice of off-duty Buffalo Police Officers being allowed to work security jobs on the side continues to this day.

Outcome

Officer O'Shei was suspended for his involvement in the Molly's Pub incident that led to the death of a national guardsman but did not be face any charges. Eloff pleaded guilty to violating the civil rights of Donald Hall, a friend of Sager. He resigned from the force as part of the plea. Eloff was sentenced to three months in federal prison and three months of home confinement in 2016 in connection to the incident.

In 2015, William Sager Sr., the father of William Sager Jr, filed a civil suit for damages against the City of Buffalo, the Buffalo Police Department, the Buffalo Police Benevolent Association, Buffalo Police Commissioner Daniel Derenda, Buffalo Police Officer Robert Eloff, Buffalo Police Officer Adam O'Shei, Jeffrey Basil, Molly's Pub, the shareholders of Molly's Pub, and Independent Health. The lawsuit continues to be litigated, and is pending trial. In 2015, a friend of William Sager also filed a civil suit for damages against the City of Buffalo, the Buffalo Police Department, Buffalo Police Officer Robert Eloff, Buffalo Police Officer Michael Beavers, Molly's Pub, and the shareholders of Molly's Pub. The lawsuit continues to be litigated, and is pending trial.