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

Richard Long, an 18 year old from North Buffalo planning his first semester at Buffalo State College, was dragged from his brother’s car at 2:30 a.m. on June 25, 1977, beaten and stomped to death by two police officers (Philip Gramaglia and Gary Atti) and a Buffalo businessman (Jack Giammaresi). The three were charged with first degree manslaughter.

The beating was precipitated by a traffic incident, in which Long, driving home after a party, cut off Gramaglia and Atti (who had also been celebrating). The two policemen bragged to their friends about the beating afterwards, over drinks at Mulligans. They never attempted to deny their actions, as this chilling testimony from the trial transcript demonstrates:

“Q. He went down?

A [Gramaglia]. Yes, sir.

Q. What did you do?

A. When he was down, or when he was going down, or just about all the way down, I kicked him.

...

A [Atti]: ...Phil reached down and grabbed him by his shirt and tried to pull, lift him up, and the kid says ‘No,’ so then I started to holler ‘Get up, get up,’ and he wouldn’t get up, and I gave him a quick kick to what I believe is the top of the head.

Q. Then what happened?

A. Well, I believe we were still hollering to get up, and I kicked him again.”

(from Buffalo News, June 25, 1987)

Long drowned in his own blood. Most of the testimony in the trial revolved around whether other officers had been involved, and, although many people still believe there were more, in the end only Gramaglia, Atti, and Giammaresi were convicted. After a relatively painless 18 month stretch in a minimum security facility, the three resumed their lives in Buffalo. This relatively mild verdict was condemned by many.

The Long trial was front page news in Buffalo for months, and was instrumental in ending the mayoral career of Stanley Makowski, making room for then State Senator Jimmy Griffin. Makowski’s police chief, Thomas Blair, left with him.

On Saturday, July 8th, 1972, the Buffalo unit of the American Communist Workers Movement(Marxist-Leninist)ACWM(M-L) opened the William Z Foster Center on 850 Tonawanda Street, centered directly in the heart of the working class district of Buffalo known as Riverside. The purpose of this center was to serve the working class of Buffalo by providing a local point of revolutionary proletarian activity through the dissemination of revolutionary literature. The center also contained a library of revolutionary works and served as an excellent location for mass meetings.

The afternoon of July 8th, several members of the Communist Party of Canada(Marxist-Leninist) joined their American Comrades in distributing the first issue of the Buffalo Red Star, as well as a leaflet celebrating the opening of the center itself. Everywhere comrades went, they were enthusiastically received by the people of Buffalo, who were eager to buy the paper and warmly greet the community. Hundreds of copies were sold within only a few hours. While the communists were engaged in mass work, Buffalo Police began to harass them and tried to suppress their fundamental right to disseminate literature. In various areas of the city, the police attempted to stop the distribution of the revolutionary leaflet announcing the opening of the center and the sale of the first local communist newspaper in Buffalo. In the Cheektowaga area, Buffalo Police arrested one American comrade and arrested, deported, and turned over to Canadian authorities two Canadian comrades for taking part in propaganda work.

Saturday evening, close to 50 people from the Riverside community and other working and oppressed people from Buffalo and many fraternal comrades from Canada attended the grand opening of the Williams Z Foster Center, Revolutionary Propaganda Center of the working class. During the course of the meeting, police cars gathered in front of and down the street from the center and the police several times engineered various disruptions of the meeting by mobilizing and uniting with a handful of local fascist elements to shout obscenities and try to enter the center and disrupt the meeting. At one point an off-duty Buffalo Police Officer demanded to see a license permitting them to operate such a Center. Once the proper paperwork was presented, he retreated to join the other “off-duty” Buffalo Police Officers sitting in their marked and unmarked vehicles.

One police collaborator proceeded to go around to the back of the bookstore and pile his garbage on the back doorstep and set it on fire. Several American comrades quickly put out the fire and removed the collaborator from the scene. Immediately two uniformed police man, shouted “You are under arrest” to the two comrades who had stopped this arsonist, and physically assaulted the comrades. The comrades resisted this attack and the one officer pulled out his gun and fired a “warning” shot into the air. When this failed to cower the comrades, he pointed his pistol at one of the American comrade’s head. With the aid of fellow Buffalo Police Officers, they then jumped upon the comrades, kicking and finally handcuffing them.

By this time the rest of the more than 50 people who had been at the evening ceremonies rushed out to give aid, and several more comrades were arrested. One comrade in the back of the patrol car again openly defied their brutality and repression and led all comrades in the singing of the Internationale. Within a couple of minutes, several more police cars and several paddy wagons had arrived. However, their sirens had brought with them the attention of several hundred people from the surrounding community.

With a fist in the air, one comrade shouted, “Death to the American monopoly capitalist class! Long live the American working class!” A Buffalo Police Officer “ordered” him to lower his fist and refrain from shouting death to the monopoly capitalist class. He refused and a “warning shot” was fired. One Buffalo Police Officer put his pistol to the temple of the comrade and threaten him with death. The comrade kept his first high, shouted slogans and challenged the officer to carry out his threat. Then a pack of Buffalo Police Officers jumped on the comrade, arrested him, and charged with “inciting a riot” and second “second-degree assault.”

The police switched their tactics, and claimed to all that they were protecting the communist from the attacks of the “people.” One Buffalo Police Officer arrested one American comrade taking part in one of the dozens of mass demonstrations which were springing up all over the neighborhood led by comrades from both countries, claiming that if the comrade didn't want to get “protected” (i.e. leave the people and hide in the Center), then he would arrest the comrade, which he proceeded to do when the comrade refused to budge. This is what police call “protective custody.”

Within minutes news of the fascist attack has spread throughout the neighborhood. Two blocks away, a bartender and several customers were overheard denouncing the police for the fascist attack, and the spirit and evidence there, like that overwhelmingly shown in dozens of discussions with the people who actually witnessed this fascist attack, was that the police and no one else was responsible for the violence, and that the Center had every right to exist.

The American comrades quickly prepared for any other attacks that the fascist Buffalo Police and their collaborators might make during the night, and began to write a leaflet to be distributed the very next morning to the broad masses of the neighborhood, stating that the entire attack, the entire assault was planned by the Buffalo Police and that the arsonist collaborator was nothing more than a footman of the police. In doing so the American comrades would actively combat the propaganda that the police were mounting that the attack was:

(a) an attack of the “people” on the communists, and

(b) that they (the police) were protecting the communists despite the latter’s protests.

The Buffalo news media the very next day clearly showed their class basis in reporting word for word the hysterics of the police.

After the Kent State killings, thousands marched down Main street, protesting the Cambodian invasion. High school students joined in. Club-swinging Buffalo police fired tear gas. Rocks were hurled through bank windows. Students were gassed repeatedly. On May 7, 1970, police filled the student union with tear gas and birdshot.

"It felt like a war zone," says James E. Brennan, editor in chief of the Spectrum, UB's student newspaper, during the riot era.

"I purchased 10 gas masks for our reporters so they could work. The police were lobbing so many tear gas canisters. We put air conditioning units in the print offices of the Spectrum, because the police were shooting tear gas in the windows of the student union. We took the staff down to the basement, put the gas masks on, went up, turned the air conditioners on, aired out the offices and put out an extra edition."

Getting gassed, he recalls, "was like getting pepper thrown in your eyes. It had an acrid, sharp smell, worse than onions." At age 20, "you feel invincible. Until I saw kids lying on the floor in the student union with that birdshot in their skin.

At a rally on March 11, 1970 the Strike Committee at the University at Buffalo issued an ultimatum to the university administration: "meet the strike demands by 9:00 p.m. the next day or face the outcome of a War Council." The Strike Committee demanded that the Buffalo Police leave campus, unconditional amnesty be given to all protesting students and an end to the ROTC program at UB.

Acting President Regan announced that a phased withdrawal of the Buffalo Police would begin March 17 in response.

1,000-1,500 people attended a nighttime rally on campus the following day. Mixed among the UB students were students from other colleges, high school students and other members of the local community.

The War Council began when the rally convened at Clark Gym. Demonstrators burned a bed sheet painted to resemble the American flag and chanted slogans in support of North Vietnam. Protesters then began to throw rocks, ice and other items at police officers gathered nearby.

The protesters moved from Clark Gym to Hayes Hall where they confronted 200 police who were lined up in front of the building. Both sides jeered at and taunted the other before the protesters moved on to the Themis site.

Protesters threw rocks at windows at the Themis site and were confronted by 75 police officers.

Approximately 1,000 protesters returned to Hayes Hall and again confronted the 200 police officers there. Rocks were thrown by protesters at already broken Hayes Hall windows, showering nearby police with glass. At this point, a number of officers charged the crowd and began to beat protesters, members of the Peace Patrol and non-protesting bystanders.

58 people were injured. Some received treatment from Student Health Services, while others were taken by ambulances to area hospitals. Six people were arrested.

Themis was a research project conducted by faculty from the Department of Physiology and was funded by the Department of Defense.

On January 4th, 1970, The Avenue was raided by Buffalo Police. 94 people were kicked out of the bar, 11 people were arrested, and two lesbians were beaten up by officers.

The Avenue opened after another queer friendly space, The Tiki, which was located on Franklin and Tupper, was shut down. The owner of The Tiki, James Garrow, was denied a liquor license by the New York State Liquor Authority because he was arrested for allegedly "cruising other men." Because he was denied a liquor license, the Avenue became a gay “juice bar” and an underground center for LGBTQ people to meet.

However, the police raid permanently closed down The Avenue. Two years later it was demolished - the fate of many gay historic sites in Buffalo. The Avenue was replaced with the Frank A. Sedita City Courthouse, named for the mayor at the time, and is still standing today.

On August 19th, 1968 FBI, U.S. Marshals and Buffalo Police entered the Unitarian Universalist church on Elmwood Avenue to arrest Bruce Beyer. Beyer had been seeking sanctuary against arrest for draft evasion in the church for publicly burning his draft card since August 8th.

Outcome

Eight of Beyer's supporters were also arrested after a brief altercation with the police and federal agents. This group, later known as the Buffalo Nine, were charged with assault. Beyer was charged with failure to report for induction and assault of a federal marshal. He was found guilty of two of three counts of assault and was sentenced to three years in prison.

On March 19th, hundreds gathered in Lafayette Square in Buffalo to protest the sentencing and burn an effigy of the presiding judge. When nine University at Buffalo students were arrested, the protesters moved to the UB campus.

On 14 July 1967, Black anarchist of Puerto Rican descent, Martin Sostre, was arrested at his Afro-Asian Bookstore in Buffalo, New York and charged with “sale of narcotics, riot, arson, and assault.”

Sostre, who previously described himself as a “street dude, a hustler” became politically active during a period of incarceration. Upon his release, he got a job as a steelworker and saved up to open a radical bookshop.

The bookstore attracted student radicals as well as neighborhood youth. During the rebellions of 1967, it became a refuge and base. Several weeks after the uprising, police and the FBI raided Sostre’s shop and framed him with a $15 bag of heroin using an informant.

Sostre faced an exorbitant bail and languished in jail for eight months before being forced to represent himself when a judge suddenly rushed the case to trial. There, he challenged potential white jurors about their feelings on integration. “I don’t see any black faces" (there were no potential black jurors), he said. “I want to be tried by my peers.” He spoke out against the twin evils of racism and militarism before eventually being handcuffed and gagged a year before it happened to Bobby Seale in Chicago. Sostre tried to hand his legal appeal to the judge on his way out of the courtroom, raised his fist, and told the audience to “keep resisting.”

Over the next eight years, Sostre appealed his case while also winning landmark legal victories over political censorship, solitary confinement, and the rights of prisoners to due process. He also organized chapters of the Black Panther Party and prisoners’ labor unions, established radical study groups and lending libraries, and published several revolutionary newspapers. During the final years of his incarceration, he identified as a revolutionary anarchist and refused to shave his ¼ inch beard or submit to mandatory rectal “searches.” For refusing these state-sanctioned sexual assaults, he was beaten nearly a dozen times. Finally, after having been named a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International and with the support of defense committees across the world, his sentence was commuted by Governor Hugh Carey on Christmas Day 1975.

“For me this is a continuous struggle whether I am on the outside or the inside,” Sostre announced. “If the battlefield changes, my struggle never changes.” He continued to organize, leading tenant's rights efforts in Harlem and co-founding a group called the Juvenile Education and Awareness Project (JEAP) with Sandy Shevack in New Jersey. JEAP combined jobs training with political education and youth mentorship, and over the course of nearly a decade, the group employed nearly 100 teenagers to renovated five buildings, transforming these abandoned properties into a community center, daycare, and apartments rented for below market price.

Martin Sostre passed away on August 12, 2015 at the age of 92. At the height of his international prominence, radical attorney William Kunstler remembered Sostre as a “Promethean figure, a hero to other inmates and to ourselves. He should not even have been in jail, but while he was, the state did all it could to destroy what it could not destroy – his indomitable will.”

Today, the Martin Sostre Institute continues his legacy.

Source: the Martin Sostre Institute