NYCLU analysis shows Buffalo police are rarely reprimanded for misconduct

A new report from the New York Civil Liberties Union finds that Buffalo police officers are rarely reprimanded for wrongdoing on the job.

The NYCLU obtained records from the Buffalo Police Department of nearly a thousand internal police misconduct investigations from 1995 to 2023, previously unavailable to the public at BPD and is not a complete data set. This data set covers some active and recently retired officers.

The NYCLU’s analysis of the data shows that of 934 internal misconduct investigations, only 86 were “maintained” by the department after the investigation – meaning the complaint was upheld and the officer was found guilty.

Of these 86 ongoing investigations, only 38 officers have been reprimanded. Only 28 were suspended for at least one day and no officers were fired or placed on probation.

“It raises a lot of questions about how accountability works and has worked within the Buffalo Police Department, and it suggests that additional oversight is needed,” said Bobby Hodgson, deputy legal director of the NYCLU. “The fact that so many didn’t result in a permanent determination doesn’t mean the wrongdoing didn’t happen, does it? That often means they haven’t gathered enough evidence to reach a conclusion one way or another.”

The analysis found that BPD does not maintain a database of internal investigations and does not have a systematic tracking system for these investigations and complaints against officers.

Hodgson called this discovery “disturbing” because it casts doubt on whether the BPD is recognizing or taking into account possible general trends, such as the demographic makeup of those filing complaints or specific officers who are frequently under investigation.

“The fact that Buffalo is not doing this itself was a really troubling finding in itself and raised a lot of questions about how they could possibly conduct a meaningful review of internal complaints of misconduct,” he said.

“It raised a lot of questions for us about the system itself and the way investigations are carried out,” he added.

And according to Professor Alex Vitale, coordinator of the Policing and Social Justice Project at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center, the system is not designed for accountability. He said the primary mission of police departments or internal affairs offices is damage control to the department, not the delivery of “any kind of justice.”

“In fact, these internal affairs offices often cover up wrongdoing, make excuses for it, or single out a particular official and cast him behind the scenes in a way that makes it seem like the department is coming clean without really meaning to “change its basic practices,” Vitale said.

WBFO reached out to the BPD for comment or an interview with Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia and did not receive a response.

According to Hodgson, the BPD initially refused to release the records when the NYCLU first requested their release through a Freedom of Information request in 2020. This request came after New York State repealed a subsection of state law called 50-a, which had been used for decades to block the release of police misconduct records. Hodgson claims the BPD only released a single recording before the NYCLU was subsequently forced to sue for the information, securing its release.

As a result of its analysis, the NYCLU is calling for the creation of a civilian review board to provide independent oversight of the BPD to improve transparency and public accountability.

“This data tells us that if we allow the police to police themselves, we will not hold them responsible,” said Aymanuel Radford, the NYCLU’s Buffalo-area field representative. “So what we’re calling for is a civilian review board that basically has some clout to be able to hold police accountable.”

It’s a call that has been made before in Buffalo but has gone unheeded.

Back in 2020, after the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, Buffalo City Council member Rasheed NC Wyatt submitted a resolution to the city council asking the city to cover the cost of establishing such a body in Buffalo as well as successful models of similar police to examine oversight measures across the country. Despite the resolution’s adoption, a civilian review board has not been established, and the Common Council shows little interest in establishing one.

But with Byron Brown stepping down as mayor to run the Regional Offtrack Betting Corporation and a mayoral election looming in 2025, Radford sees an opportunity to revive the push for a civilian review board in Buffalo, supported by the NYCLU’s findings.

“I think because of the change in Buffalo and because of the data we have now, I think we’re having a different discussion about a civilian review board than we’ve had in the last four years.”