CW: On the night of April 19th, when John Willet, a 22 year old Black man, was driving, he noticed a car was following him. Fearing that it may be someone meaning to do him harm, he sped away. The car following him turned out to be undercover police car, which pursued Willet to Ontario and Philadelphia Streets. Willet parked his vehicle, got out and ran across the street where he willingly surrendered. Willet reported that he stood there with his hands in the air when a Buffalo Police Officer punched him and threw him down to the ground. Buffalo Police Officer John Cirulli and Nicholas Militello along with four other officers kneed and punched Willet while trying to apprehend him. John Cirulli kicked and punched Willet while he was handcuffed and laying face down, pleading for them to stop.

Outcome

On April 28, 2014, officers were placed on administrative leave. On April 29, 2014, BPD suspended John Cirulli from duty without pay for violating departmental rules and regulations. On May 29, 2014, he resigned his position with the Buffalo Police Department and pleaded guilty to two federal misdemeanor civil rights violations. He was sentenced to 12 months probation.

On April 15, 2015, Willet filed a lawsuit against him, Militello, the Buffalo Police Department, the city of Buffalo, Jeffrey Rinaldo and another defendant. Judge Richard J. Arcara dismissed the case.

Police officers Corey Krug and Joseph Hassett assaulted and detained Rickey Spencer for a violation of NYS V&T Law 1236 Lamps and Other Equipment on Bicycles in that he did not have a light or reflector on his bicycle. Spencer required surgery on his arm due to the assault.

Police busted down a door of a Breckenridge apartment belonging to Iraqi War combat veteran, Sgt. Adam Arroyo in Buffalo looking for drugs. In the process, the police shot Arroyo's dog Cindy multiple times, killing the dog.

Police claim they read his address wrong. They meant to raid the upstairs front apartment at 304 Breckenridge St, but they became confused and raided the rear apartment. Busting down Arroyo’s door, they found that he was not at home. His dog Cindy, a pit bull, was tethered to the sink in the kitchen.

Detective Joseph Cook, accompanied by a SWAT team of police, chose to stand beyond the length of tether and shoot Cindy, as opposed to wasting the time it would take to get animal control into the house and place the dog in a kennel.

After Cindy was shot, animal control arrived and unloosened her from her bloodied leash. The impact of the bullet had thrown the dog, and it had become entangled around her neck. They were inconvenienced as they unwound her leash and untethered her, removing her carcass in a body bag.

Without realizing it was not the apartment named on the search warrant, police were inconvenienced as they ransacked the apartment. Blood from the dog got on their boots and, despite wiping it off on the carpet, they spread it all over the apartment. Some of it stuck like plague to their boots.

In 2012, Richard A. Metcalf Jr. died from strangulation when jail guards at the Erie County Holding Center secured a spit mask around his neck, leading to suffocation while he was restrained and left face down on a stretcher with the mask and a pillowcase covering his head. Metcalf, aged 35, was transported to Erie County Medical Center and taken off life support after two days.

Outcome

In a civil suit filed by Metcalf’s father, Erie County could have settled over the death of Richard A. Metcalf Jr. for $17 million, but instead took the case to a trial. The trial ended with a jury’s $95 million judgment against the county – the largest known civil verdict ever against the county. Before the lawsuit filed by Metcalf’s father went to trial, the county had already spent $900,000 on legal bills related to the case. Toth said he expects legal costs for defending the county through the trial to total around $2 million.

County Attorney Jeremy Toth called the jury’s decision “inexplicable” and the county would argue the court for a reduced settlement. After arguing for a reduced settlement, a state judge has cut the damages award for the murder of Richard A. Metcalf Jr. from $100 million to $20 million. Acting State Supreme Court Justice Mark J. Grisanti reduced the jury's April award after attorneys for the county and five current and former jail deputies argued that what the jury granted was "excessive."

The jury determined the five deputies used excessive force and four of the five were negligent and violated Metcalf’s civil rights by being “deliberately indifferent” to his medical needs. Jurors in the Metcalf case found that the county and five current and former deputies were liable for using excessive force and depriving Metcalf of proper mental and physical medical care. Among the former deputies that were found to have used used excessive force on Metcalf were Matthew Cross and Robert States, who are now current Buffalo Police Officers. Robert Dee was fired in 2022 by the Sheriff’s Office after a series of investigations into unrelated misconduct, including domestic violence charges and improper contact with a woman who was incarcerated. Edward Kawalek and Scott Emerling still work for the Sheriff’s Office.

Officer Joseph Hassett maliciously and intentionally assaulted Adam Hamideh without provocation during a September 2012 arrest near 1425 Clinton St.

Hamideh said he was he was painfully and seriously injured from the repeated blows and also suffered a shock to his nerves and nervous system and may have permanent defects.

Outcome

A civil case against the City of Buffalo was settled for $70,000. There has been no information publicly released about disciplinary action against officer Hassett.

Wilson Morales was shot by Buffalo police officers after a car chase on the city’s East Side. The bullet that struck Morales, then a 17-year-old student at WNY Maritime Charter School, instantly paralyzed him from the chest down.

Outcome

Morales, who is still recuperating, faces trial on charges of assaulting a police officer and unlawfully fleeing from a police officer.

Buffalo’s Common Council authorized one of the largest lawsuit settlements in the city’s history: $4.5 million to Morales. A grand jury cleared Officer Karl B. Schultz and a partner at the time, Jason R. Whitenight, agreeing they fired in self-defense as the teenager backed the van he was driving toward Whitenight at the tail-end of a high-speed chase.

Tremel Stone was shot while his back was facing Officer Ron Ammerman and he was running away. Stone stated that the only reason he ran was because the two officers are well known for planting evidence. Wendy Collier and Ron Ammerman did plant a gun on Stone that was used to charge him with possession of weapon

Outcome

With discovery that was provided during a civil suit, it became clear that the officers conspired to plant evidence on Stone. A civil suit against the City of Buffalo and officers involved for damages was settled for $150,000.

An expert affidavit was submitted by Dannie Sherman, a former law enforcement officer and lead investigator in more than 800 cases. His opinion, with a reasonable degree of certainty, was that the shooting was not justified; there was a cover up with planted evidence with an overall lax review, and the planted evidence was tolerated by the Buffalo Police Department. He states that the level of complaints against Ammerman and Collier is not at all the norm.

Lt. Kwiatkowski arrived at Treehaven Road in Buffalo to respond to a vehicle that had been stopped by the Cheektowaga Police Department (CPD) and that was believed to be involved in an ongoing series of BB gun shootings, including one which occurred earlier that night. Lt. Kwiatkowski was the first BPD officer to arrive at the scene. Other CPD officers were present at the scene when Lt. Kwiatkowski arrived and had already removed the vehicle’s four occupants, who were all between 16 and 18 years old.

At the time of Lt. Kwiatkowski’s arrival, all of the occupants were compliant and completely under the control of the CPD officers. Upon arriving at the scene, Lt. Kwiatkowski used unlawful and unreasonable force on each of the four occupants. Specifically, Lt. Kwiatkowski admitted to forcibly pushing each of the suspects heads and upper torsos into the vehicle around which they were being detained. He also called the four Black teenagers “savage dogs” and asked, "Do you like shooting at white kids?"

Outcome

A federal judge sentenced the former Buffalo Police lieutenant to four months in prison in 2018.

In 2006, Officer Cariol Horne intervened to stop a fellow officer, Gregory Kwiatkowski, who was choking Neal Mack, a Black man who was already placed under arrest and handcuffed. Horne was assaulted by the officer during the intervention, and thereafter the Buffalo Police Department punished officer Cariol Horne by terminating her for attempting to stop the assault by her fellow officer upon a citizen —just one year shy of receiving her full pension.

In October 2020, Buffalo adopted "Cariol's Law," to require police to intervene if a fellow officer uses excessive force. In 2021, a New York court awarded her the pension and back pay she earned. The city has yet to pay Cariol her pension.

Background

Mayor Byron W.  Brown's administration wanted to turn Buffalo's “crime problem” around by trying to replicate former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's famously tough stance on crime in New York, where crime levels plummeted. This was despite the fact that the “tough on crime” tactics were notorious for racially targeting Black communities and crime levels were dropping before Giuliani took office.

Brown declared what he called a "zero-tolerance" policy on so-called "quality-of-life" crimes in an effort to curb petty crime.

Buffalo Police Chief H. McCarthy Gipson announced when he was appointed to his position in February 2006, ”we're going to have to be mobile, agile and slightly hostile in trying to get the job of policing done in the City of Buffalo.”

The several days prior to the events detailed below, the Erie County Executive at the time, Joel Giambra, publicly came out against the Drug War. Giambra held a press conference with members of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, a group of ex-cops and prosecutors advocating the decriminalization or legalization of drugs.

The Raids

From April 18th to April 20th, 2006, 38 Buffalo homes were invaded by no-knock SWAT raids in "Operation Shock and Awe," a phrase, borrowed from the US military to describe its strategy in the early days of the Iraq War. The war on drug raids were conducted under the direction of then Buffalo Police Commissioner H. McCarthy Gipson over a three day period and resulted in the arrest of approximately 78 people.

The department even invited a couple of reporters from the Buffalo News(BN) to cover the invasion, like embedded war correspondents. "We are declaring war on street-level drug dealing," Gipson told two reporters from the BN, during one of the raids.

Scores of police officers dressed in military battle gear conducted the no-knock SWAT raids deploying diversionary grenades, broke down doors with battering rams, and stormed residences with automatic assault rifles ablaze traumatizing entire communities while they were going about their daily lives. Accounts of the raids detail a 1-year-old being present while shotgun blasts rang out and their three dogs were murdered in front of their eyes,

Gipson declared victory, boasting of the department’s haul: six pounds of marijuana, seven ounces of crack cocaine, and five guns. 

Outcome

A month after the raids occurred, an analysis conducted by the Buffalo News found that of the 78 Buffalo residents who were originally detained during the raids, only 20 faced a felony charge. Sixteen Buffalo residents were immediately released because the judge found there wasn't enough evidence to support legally sound charges. At least 36 of those arrested were out of jail within 24 hours of being arrested.

The original six pounds of marijuana police claimed to have found was actually four pounds, thirteen ounces. Three and a half pounds of that came by way of an unrelated traffic stop on the same day that raids had taken place and had nothing to do with the raids. They found all of five guns. 

City leaders were furious, not because city police had just terrorized innocent people with fruitless SWAT raids, but because they believed so many petty offenders were let off. City officials demanded tougher drug laws.

Commissioner Gipson meet with City Court judges, following the charge dismissals, to try and encourage them to increase bail for people charged with drug dealing. However, City Court judges said they simply didn't have the discretion to impose harsh sentences just because the mayor ordered a crackdown on drugs. Council Member Dominic Bonifacio Jr. of Niagara District said that the dismissals were, "a slap in the face to our good men in blue" and claimed that they proved the “revolving door in the court system.”

Judge Thomas P. Franczyk, who presided over the majority of cases from the raids, said he found problems with police paperwork that they don’t pass legal muster. "It still has to pass the test of legal sufficiency," Franczyk said. "The law is the law, and the facts are the facts," he said. "In some cases, the accusatory paperwork is not alleging sufficient facts to support the defendant's knowing and unlawful possession of the drugs . . . It's not enough to say they were there when the drugs were found somewhere in the house."

Franczyk sent a letter to Commissioner Gipson, urging him to have his officers meet with the members of the District Attorney's office to cut down on paperwork errors and properly document evidence.

"What we learned was we need to be more specific about who possesses what," conceded Chief of Detectives Dennis Richards, who said he and other police brass recently sat down with narcotics detectives to make sure they write up their paperwork correctly after realizing that police actually have to have evidence of a crime for an arrest to have legal standing.

Department and city officials started to discuss sending narcotics cops and SWAT teams out with housing inspectors and the county Health Department to “clean up” suspected crack houses without the Fourth Amendment warrant requirements. The inspectors' presence would enable police to get inside the home without the legal hurdle of procuring a search warrant, intentionally circumventing constitutionally protected right to no unlawful search and seizures. And police talked about looking into working with federal housing officials to seize problem drug houses.

Shock and Awe "is just the beginning," said Richards, the chief of detectives.  "If you're dealing drugs in Buffalo, basically, you're going to be dealing with the Police Department. There will certainly be more raids in the future," Richards said. "You can count on that . . . We're looking at small-scale, large-scale, street-level. Nice quiet streets marred by one drug house as well as entire streets written off as drug house streets. So we're looking at top to bottom."

Gipson said arresting dealers repeatedly may be the only way to get the message through, comparing it to the aggressive, long-term approach to treating drug abusers, who often try to quit multiple times before having success.  "Our effectiveness comes in trying to keep them off kilter .  .  .  Keep them wondering if we're coming today or not coming."

Buffalo Police and city leadership took several steps beyond the raids in the war on drugs. The Police Department rearranged its squads to add three more sergeants and eight detectives to its Narcotics Unit, which operated day and night, instead of just at night. The city also reintroduced "Operation Clean Sweep," in which a team of law enforcement, city inspectors and other city workers descend on a block identified as having crime and blight problems. 

As for the Brown Administration's decision to replicate the Giuliani “tough on crime” strategy, well Rudy Giuliani’s personal reputation in tatters but so is the reputation of the tough-on-crime policing system he supervised as mayor of NYC in the 90s. There have now been 18 overturned convictions from that era based on the testimony of a single corrupt NYPD detective, Lou Scarcella.

On May 11 2004 Steve Kurtz awoke to find his wife dead beside him. When paramedics arrived at his house they noticed a makeshift laboratory on an upstairs landing, with an incubator full of toxic-looking bacteria, and alerted the Buffalo Police.

Kurtz assured them his lab was, in effect, his studio; that he was an internationally recognised artist, as well as an art professor at the University at Buffalo, who used molecular biology in his work. He was forced to give the police an impromptu presentation while his wife lay dead in another room - he even stuck his finger in a Petri dish of bright scarlet bacteria and tasted it to prove it was harmless. An autopsy later showed that Hope, his partner of 27 years, had died of heart failure in her sleep.

Police deemed the Kurtzes' art materials suspicious and alerted the FBI. The day after the death of his wife, when Kurtz returned from the funeral home, three car-loads of FBI agents were waiting for him. He was now suspected of bioterrorism. His house was quarantined with yellow police tape. Five regional branches of the FBI, the Joint Terrorism Task Force, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defence, the Buffalo Police, fire department, and state marshal's office swarmed over Kurtz's home. They were protected by white hazmat suits and wore breathing apparatus. In the middle of all this, his next-door neighbour put up a sign of support in the window: "He's not a terrorist, he's my neighbour!"

In 1986, Kurtz and his wife co-founded Critical Art Ensemble (CAE), a small artists' collective "dedicated to exploring the intersections between art, technology, radical politics and critical theory". When the FBI raided his house, Kurtz was researching the history of germ warfare for a new project. He was growing simple types of bacterial cultures, routinely used in high-school biology classes, that could also be used to simulate the mushrooming of anthrax and plague.

Outcome

The FBI detained Kurtz in a hotel; agents took the room across the hall so they could watch his door. Investigators impounded Kurtz's three computers, the contents of his lab, his car, correspondence and a small library of books with titles like Spores, Plagues and History: The Story of Anthrax. They locked his cat in the attic for two days without food or water. They also confiscated his wife's body.

A federal grand jury was convened to evaluate bio-terrorism charges against Kurtz. He was indicted, but not under the biological weapons anti-terrorism act. He and Robert Ferrell, a professor of human genetics at the University of Pittsburgh, were charged with mail and wire fraud, accused of colluding to illegally furnish Kurtz with $256 of harmless bacterial cultures. The crime carried a sentence of up to 20 years. Under the USA PATRIOT Act, the maximum sentence for these charges was increased from five years to twenty years in prison. Kurtz's lawyer argued the case should be thrown out of court. The government's "paranoid over-reaction", he said, is a political attack on Kurtz's subversive art.

The artistic community rallied to the cause, staging protests and organising an auction - that raised $170,000 for his defence.

Federal Judge Richard J. Arcara dismissed the government's entire indictment against Dr. Kurtz as "insufficient on its face." In October 2007, Dr. Ferrell pleaded to a lesser misdemeanor charge after recurring bouts of cancer and three strokes suffered since his indictment prevented him from continuing the struggle.

CW: More than two dozen Buffalo police officers attacked a peaceful group of bicyclists at 6:30 p.m. They kicked some and beat several with clubs and Mag-Lites. They arrested nine of them on the kind of trumped-up felony charges.

Derold Jamison, an 18 year old high school student, was sitting in a friend's car on Fougeron Street when a car with three white Buffalo Police Officers in plain clothes pulled up next to him. They shined a flashlight in the car and told him to put his hands where they could see them.

The officers told Jamison to get out of the vehicle. He was searched, asked what he was doiing there, handcuffed and told to "get down on my knees." Once on his knees, he was hit on the side of his face with a flashlight.

At that point, Jamison's friend came out of the alley, saw what was happening to his friend, and took off running with two officers in pursuit, leaving one officer with Jamison.

The officer that stayed behind put Jamison in the back seat of his friend's car, and the officer got in the front seat behind the wheel. Jamison informed the officer that the back door that he was sitting next to was still open. The officer ignored him. The officer then started the car and pulled away from the curb, making a sharp left turn causing him, with his hands still handcuffed behind his back, to fall out of the car and onto the street.

As Jamison lay in the street, the officer put the car in reverse and attempted to run him over. Jamison ran out of the way and into a nearby yard. The officer then caught up with him and began to beat him again. The officer then pulled his gun out and placed it next to Jamison's head and said, "I would blow your brains out but it's too close to Christmas." With the gun still next to Jamison's head, the officer fired a shot into the ground, and then continued beating him again with his flashlight.

When the sound of the shooting started to draw attention, the officer brought Jamison back to the car until another witness noticed. Throughout the assault, the officer referred to Jamison using racial slurs.

Shortly after, the other officers returned and put Jamison in the car where the beating and name calling continued, forcing him to tell them where his friend lived. On arrival at his friend's house the officers had a short conversation with the friend and released him in his mother's presence. At this point Jamison was also released, and the officer who had assaulted him wiped the blood from his face and said, "Merry Christmas."

All three officers then drove away.

After notifying his father, Derold Jamison. Sr, they went to police headquarters and reported the incident to Internal Affairs. According to Mr. Jamison, Sr.. members of Internal Affairs later identified the officers as detectives Thomas McDonald, Gerald Skinner and Mark Lauber of the Streets Crime Unit.

October 7th, 1992 Buffalo Police Officer Richard C Lopez approached the vehicle of Gregory Johnson, a 23 year old Black man, with his gun drawn. Lopez discharged his gun into Johnson's skull. Johnson died a short time later.

Outcome

The police claimed the lynching was accidental, and on April 7 1993 a grand jury cleared Lopez.

Shortly after 10 PM on the night of December 5th, 1991 Detective Mark Lauber of the Buffalo Police Department shot Paul Mills, a 19 year old Black student of Erie County Community College, as he ran away from the detective. Paul was the second youngest of Bobby and Ann Mills' four children.

Mills was shot by the detective while he was in plain clothes with the departments destructive 9-millimeter gun under the left arm. The bullet traveled downward, damaging his lungs, liver and spleen before exiting his right side just above the hip. Based on the entrance of the bullet, it's reasonable to assume Mills had his left arm up when he was shot.

According to police account, Mills apparently pulled a gun on the detective prior to fleeing. Mills proceeds to run through a yard on Cambridge Ave and collapsed in the front yard of a residence on Cornwall Ave. A search of the area that night, by police, failed to turn up any weapon. However, police claim that approximately 24 later, a gun was found on the roof of a shed in the rear of the Cambridge Ave yard. The Buffalo Police Commissioner did not say if fingerprints were found on the gun.

A Buffalo resident said that Mills laid on Cornwall after collapsing for nearly 20 minutes before he was picked up by an ambulance and transported to Erie County Medical Center. The witness said, "He lost a lot of blood, you could see it now if not for the snow."

An unnamed police officer said that, "Lauber is one of the good Irish Catholic boys from South Buffalo, and Dillon(the DA at the time) is not going to hurt him."

Thomas Grillo, a retired Buffalo police officer, was arrested for attacking a man with a tire iron and threatening to shoot him with a loaded revolver during an apparent traffic dispute. Grillo was accused of smashing the window of the driver's car with a tire iron and hitting the driver. He was also accused of pointing a loaded .38-caliber revolver at the driver's head.

Outcome

Grillo was charged with assault, first-degree reckless endangerment, possession of a weapon and criminal mischief.

Terrance Robinson, an off-duty Buffalo Police Officer, went to assist another off-duty officer who was working as a restaurant security guard around 3:00 AM on October 22nd, 1989. The officers restrained Anthony Williams, 20, with handcuffs and then Officer Robinson pulled his gun out and placed it against Williams' head. Officer Robinson threatened to blow Williams brains out if he moved while Williams was in handcuffs. There is some dispute whether Williams yelled or moved his head, but after he did, Officer Robinson's gun went off, shooting Williams in the head.

The shooting occurred about four hours after Robinson told police superiors he was too sick to work his normal shift.

Williams, shot once in the right temple, died three days later.

Outcome

A grand jury was assigned to investigate the fatal shooting.

Buffalo Police Officer Terrence Robinson was arrested following his indictment on a second-degree manslaughter charge in the fatal shooting of Anthony Williams. The indictment also charged Robinson with prohibited use of a firearm in the death of Williams. Robinson was allowed to remain free on his own recognizance after he pleaded innocent. Assigned to administrative duties since the shooting, Robinson was suspended without pay and later formerly fired from the department after his conviction.

State Supreme Court Justice Julian F. Kubiniec told the police officer he was "responsible for the consequences" of drawing his weapon. Kubiniec imposed the maximum-permitted term on Robinson of 5 to 15 years.

"There was no reason ever for you to pull that weapon out," Kubiniec said in rebuking the five-year police officer for drawing one of his two service revolvers.

Buffalo Police Officer Cedric Holloway responded to a 911 call from Darlene Brantley arising from a dispute she had with her ex-boyfriend, during the morning hours of September 2, 1989. Holloway claimed he saw Brantley with a knife and responded by shooting and killing Brantley, a Black 31 year old mother of a 9-year-old boy. Officer Holloway shot Brantley through the open window of his police vehicle.

Brantley was the first Black woman ever killed by an on-duty Black officer in the Buffalo Police Department. She was also the first person to be killed by the department's new automatic weapon, the 9-millimeter. The bullet from the gun tore through her abdominal organs, damaging her liver, lungs and spleen before exiting her left side. For eleven months she struggled to live as a patient at ECMC's intensive care unit. She died on July 23, 1990.

On August 7, 1981, the gay rights activist Bob Uplinger was arrested on the corner of North Street and Irving Place in Buffalo for inviting an undercover police officer back to his apartment. Convinced his arrest was unjust, Uplinger fought the state loitering laws that enabled police to entrap gay men and criminalize their sexuality.

The result: a historical verdict in the New York State Court of Appeals, and one of the first gay rights cases to ever appear before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Source: Buffalo-Niagara LGBTQ History Project

Tony Vives, a young Puerto Rican man, was murdered by Buffalo Police at Precinct No. 7 in the old First Ward after being brutally beaten and arrested on false charges of "creating a disturbance" and "resisting arrest." During this time, the old First Ward was a community of poor white, Black, and Puerto Rican people.

Vives was arrested by officer Terry Adams on September 8th while relaxing with some friends on the front steps of a house at Fulton Street and Red Jacket Street. Adams chased Vives into the house, and threatened, "I'll blow your brains out right now." Officer Adams had previously been heard telling Vives on several occasions, "I'm gonna get you," according to many of his friends.

Vives asked repeatedly why he was being arrested, but was answered only with beatings from Adam's large metal flashlight. The owner of the house stopped Adams from shooting Vives on the spot and ordered him out of the house. After calling for backup, Adams returned to handcuff Vives and take him away.

The community reacted immediately to the senselessness of the arrest. Several people went down to the precinct, where they were told of Vives' death. The police claimed it was suicide.

News of the murder sparked two nights of militants protests. Residents took to the streets throwing debris at cops, tossing firebombs at the police station, and spray painting Vives' name, "No. Seven are murderers," and "Pay back" all over the area.

Precinct 7 had a long and notorious record of harassing the community.