avoidable fleet vehicle accident (3rd incident of avoidable fleet vehicle accident

Outcome

Reprimand

According to the city misconduct database, Costello was involved in a fender bender: he backed into a garbage can, and it was avoidable.

Outcome

reprimanded because violated Rules and Reg Section 4.18 Departmental Property and Equipment

According to a complaint associated with city's disciplinary record, victim was allegedly cap-stunned, and punched and kicked while handcuffed on the ground

In a car chase, Hill allegedly pursued a civilian and shot the civilian in the shoulder.

Outcome

The civilian was sentenced to 10 to 20 years in state prison and released in 2015

Accoriding to the City RPD misconduct database, officer fabricated information regarding a warrant and asked victim to lift her shirt to see if she had a tattoo like the person who was supposedly in the database with a warrant that matched the victims description. He also made several inappropriate comments and drove her home in his vehicle.

Outcome

Letter of reprimand on file after investigation

Individual filed complaint that after being chased by police, he was hit, kicked, and punched by officers including officers Mario Correia, Yodice, and Sofia. CRB and RPD sustained complaint that Correia struck the individual in the head with flashlight and lied about it.

Outcome

Other officers testified that Correia hit individual with the flashlight, Correia denied it. Disciplinary letter states his untruthfulness and violation of procedure could have resulted in termination but he's being given "a second chance", and 60 days unpaid leave. Correia appealed and lost.

According to the City RPD misconduct database, Officer Correia pulled out personal firearm while off duty and threatened an individual with it after he thought the individual had pulled the hair of another female. He continued to wave the firearm around and make claims that the individual was all done now and he could end him now.

Outcome

5 day suspension without pay, report filed with professional standards section

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 doing 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.

On January 2, 1992 Frank A Nelson, a Black man, was arrested on the same charge for which he had been released approximately 6 hours earlier. Upon his arrival at 40 Delaware Avenue, he was bailed out and released. He was told to pick up his property at 74 Franklin Street. A woman desk officer told him after asking him if he was Frank Nelson, that he had to pick up his property in a back room which she directed him to. On entering the room he spent the next three hours being beaten while handcuffed.

The officers took turns beating up Nelson, and bragged about being able to make him bark like a dog as they punched and kicked him to the floor.

He told them that they made a mistake and that he was released from across the street but they said he thought he was "tough." They moved toward him, calling him racial slurs, and continued to beat him. He attempted to make a break for the door which was slammed shut but was placed in a head-lock, and thrown to the floor on his stomach.

While lying in his hospital bed with a spinal injury, unable to move his legs, Nelson gave an account of how he was beaten with sticks, kicked, choked, and stomped, while handcuffed behind his back, lying on his stomach:

"A white shirt walked in, I looked him right in the face.

'Cover his face, I don't want him to see me. You know what to do,' he screamed.

A cloth was placed over my face. I could feel the barrel of a gun being pushed into my eyeballs;

'Do you like that, n****r?’

At one point, one of them stood on my back and pulled my handcuffed arms up to my head," recounted Nelson.

"They said they were going to kill me like they did somebody named King; I don't remember the first name, but I had no reason to doubt them."

Still handcuffed, Nelson was dragged to an elevator where he was kicked in the throat.

"I tried to get up so they would not kick me in the throat, that's when I realized I couldn't feel my legs."

When the Pre-Trial Services people arrived at about 8:30 a.m., Nelson was lying on the concrete floor in a pool of blood, still handcuffed behind his back, unable to move.

"When I saw the White man. I knew they were back to kill me, but when he identified himself from Pre-Trial, I begged him not to leave me. When he got a closer look, he said, ‘Oh my God.’ He called an ambulance and stayed with me."

Mr. Nelson recalled with tears streaming down his disfigured face, "I owe him my life.”

Because the police have threatened to arrest him in the hospital, unless he signed papers, Nelson said he fears for his life. At one point because of police presence, the hospital had to call headquarters to find out if Nelson was under arrest so that they could move him to the hospital lock-up if such was the case. No one seemed to know if he was under arrest.

Franklin Pratcher, attorney for the family, said that members of the National Bar Association and private sector got together and intended to start bringing cases against this type of brutality.

"Some officers are frustrated with so much crime on the street but others are just prejudiced. They do not see Black people as human beings and don't treat us the same as White people." He went on to say that the big problem is the lack of community out-cry as well as a lack of outrage from the legal community itself.

Frank Nelson was the friend who took in Yolanda Mitchell, who was paralyzed in the July 1992 shooting on Carlton St. in the Children’s Park. He was her sole helper. While still in a wheelchair, she was largely unable to do for herself. Following the beating by Buffalo police, Mr. Nelson occupied a room on the same floor facing the same fate.

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 allegedly pulled a gun on the detective prior to fleeing. Mills proceeded to run away from police through a yard on Cambridge Ave fearing for his life 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 alleged that approximately 24hrs 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.

According to city of Rochester court proceedings for P.S.S. Case 86-1207, Gary Galetta responded as a plainclothes officer to a burglary report along with three uniformed officer. The victim was apprehended as a suspect by the four officers, and Galetta kicked the victim in the side and head while they were on the ground.

Outcome

RPD suspended Gary Galetta without pay for 20 days. This suspension was satisfied with time from the Gary Galetta's compensatory time bank.

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.

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 August 22, 1974 William Johnson Jr. was stopped for a traffic check and was told there was a warrant out for his arrest. Johnson was arrested and taken to Precinct 12. While being booked a group of Buffalo Police officers, including McParlene, Sonberg, Bohen, and Dougherty, surrounded him, lifted him in the air, threw him on a table from which he fell onto the floor, and beat him. During this, Johnson's sister was yelling at the police to leave her brother alone.

Following the assault Johnson was booked and taken to the Precinct 3 cell block, since the cells in Precinct 12 has been condemned for a year at that point.

After midnight, a group of police approached Johnson's cell and told him to come out or they would come and get him. The police unlocked his cell, took Johnson out, and attacked him with a blackjack while the other officers continued beating him. Johnson blacked out and when he came to, Officers O'Malley and McParlene punched him back into his cell.

Around midnight on August 23rd, Johnson went back to Precinct 12 to retrieve his possessions that has been seized when he was arrested the previous night. Technician Dougherty confronted him in the station house and told him, "You think you're a tough guy. I ain't gonna give you shit." And Johnson told Dougherty he could take his things and "shove them up your ass," and then proceeded to walk out of the precinct. Dougherty followed him, yelling, "Hey punk...hey you tough guy...come here..." all the way into the street. Johnson turned and ran, and Officer Bohen thre his nightstick and hit Johnson on the head. The officers caught him, beat him, smashed his head into the ground, and handcuffed him. Johnson was then dragged to the precinct and booked for disorderly conduct and resisting arrest.

In the morning, Johnson went to the hospital, where he stayed for three days. Hospital records indicated that he had a fractured vertebrae, multiple bruises and swelling all over his back, front legs and arms, bruised ribs, numb fingers, blurred vision, and facial contusions.

Outcome

On October 24, in City Court, before Judge Honan, all charges against the seven police officers and one civilian police employee were dropped.

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.