It’s not just one retired cop saying many Buffalo officers use racial slurs. A lawsuit against the City of Buffalo claiming discriminatory policing sheds light on other questionable practices in the department.
Lawyers for the group Black Love Resists in the Rust, which argues that Mayor Byron W. Brown’s “Strike Force” set up checkpoints targeting drivers of color, have gathered up internal emails and records. They reveal:
The department’s Internal Affairs Division destroys case records without rhyme or reason.
"Racism is horrendous and horrific, and we shouldn’t stand for it," Fillmore Council Member Mitchell Nowakowski said.
This came up when a lawyer for the city, Robert Quinn, said during a court hearing in November of 2020 that he could not turn over some files sought by the opposition.
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“We produced all of the records that we still had,” Quinn said, when pressed about records he had yet to turn over. “The other ones had previously been destroyed.”
The Internal Affairs Division keeps only paper records unless it has scanned them in for some reason, he said. And he could not provide a reason why some of that paperwork was gone.
“You don't just destroy a file,” the judge in the federal case, Clare Reiss, told him. “Either you hope you have some kind of document destruction policy or you do it on a scheduled basis, but somebody doesn't just walk into your office and say, today I'm going to, you know, destroy a couple files.”
But Quinn could not produce a document-destruction policy. And, according to the transcript, he shed no light on why some files were gone, but others from the same year were found.
Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia declined to comment because of the pending litigation. Lawyers for Black Love Resists intend to seek pretrial testimony from Gramaglia as well.
“Dozens and dozens of relevant files were destroyed,” said Anjana Malhotra, one of the attorneys for Black Love Resists. The lawyers wanted to learn what the department’s Internal Affairs Division found with some specific complaints about Strike Force officers.
“It’s unfortunate because a lot of these files raised some very critical complaints about the Buffalo Police Department and racial bias,” she said.
Retired Lt. Thomas Whelan wasn’t the only department veteran to hear officers use racial slurs.
The new federal complaint, alleging discrimination, follows Mayor Byron Brown’s insistence days ago that his City Hall team does not tolerate discriminatory talk by employees.
“Have I ever said it? Yes, I have, obviously,” Whelan said during a deposition in April. “I’m a human being.”
Whelan, who was on the police force from 1997 to 2018, testified that a slur against Black people was in widespread use among officers, especially in heated confrontations with citizens.
To defend the police force, the mayor cast Whelan’s statement as the recollection of only one cop: “What was in one individual's heart and head is in no way the culture of the Buffalo Police Department,” Brown told The Buffalo News a week ago.
Lawyers for Black Love Resists also took sworn testimony from Lt. Lance Russo and asked if he ever heard officers use racial slurs.
“Sure,” Russo said.
Russo said he heard them from old-timers when he first got on the job, in 1995. Those slurs included a racial epithet targeting Black people, he added. But Russo went on to say “the job has really changed a lot. So it’s not a prevalent thing anymore.”
A lawyer asked Russo if he would be surprised to learn that Whelan had testified to hearing Strike Force officers use the racial slur multiple times?
“Yeah. I would be surprised,” answered Russo, whom The News was unable to reach for elaboration.
Gramaglia, the police commissioner, also has expressed surprise at Whelan's testimony and has said his claim does not indicate a wider culture problem within the department. He said on Nov. 14 that current and retired officers were "shocked and dismayed" by Whelan's remarks.
One retiree suggested the Strike Force checkpoints ended when they began to reflect badly on the mayor.
“Discriminatory language by any employee is not tolerated in this administration,” Mayor Byron Brown said. He didn’t say the retired lieutenant was wrong. But he said department officials would deal seriously with such a complaint.
Retired Capt. Philip Serafini was with the Buffalo Police Department from 1986 to 2018, and in his later years served with the Housing Unit, which often worked in tandem with the Strike Force. Serafini testified that he never got a clear explanation about why the Strike Force checkpoints ended in November 2017, when they were stoking community resentment. But he remembered a call from Byron Lockwood, the deputy police commissioner at the time, giving him the news, and he surmised the decision stemmed from a remark by an officer.
“There was one incident that happened on a traffic safety checkpoint that he was concerned about,” Serafini said of Lockwood.
“One of the motorists was complaining about the traffic safety checkpoint, and the officer said something, again, to the extent that ‘this is what the mayor does,’ " Serafini testified.
“So is it fair to say,” Serafini was asked, ”that you understood the checkpoint suspension to be a response to criticisms or concerns about officer conduct at the checkpoints?”
“I don't know, exactly,” Serafini said. “As I said, the deputy commissioner was upset about that one incident, and he said that they wanted to go in a different direction, something to that effect.”
Reached days ago, Serafini told The News that he can't say for sure why the checkpoints ended.
"Word had gotten back to him, somehow, that this had happened," Serafini said of Lockwood. "I said that may have been the reason. I don't know for sure."
A spokesman for the mayor did not respond to a request for comment.
Then-Commissioner Daniel Derenda urged cops to write more tickets.
“There is a problem with systemic racism at every level, it appears, with the Buffalo Police Department,” said Anjana Malhotra, a senior attorney with the National Center for Law and Economic Justice
Some of the retired officers who sat for depositions said Strike Force officers were expected to be productive, and their productivity was measured in how many tickets they wrote and arrests they made – but there were no predetermined benchmarks, the retirees insisted.
Lawyers representing Black Love Resists obtained emails suggesting otherwise.
In one, from 2012, then-Police Commissioner Daniel Derenda wrote: “Let’s make a big push in the next five days to hit 1,000 arrests in 50 days.” He followed that with a written statement that used the term “zero tolerance.” It said officers should be encouraged to impound as many vehicles, write as many tickets and make as many arrests as possible.
Reacting to an activity report in 2013, Derenda wrote, “low numbers not good.” In 2014, he told Strike Force leaders in an email: “numbers have not been good. Are we doing roadblocks? I need officers to stay in target area. If they leave I need to know why.”
“I didn’t set quotas,” Derenda said during his deposition. The email directing officers to have “zero tolerance” was an example of his desire for “proactive policing,” which he described as displaying an obvious police presence and doing “everything from writing traffic tickets to parking tickets to city ordinances to making arrests."
“It’s all part of their job,” Derenda told the lawyers. He declined to comment for this article.
Supervisors aren’t always told the outcome of disciplinary cases involving their officers and don’t always know their disciplinary history.
Personnel administrators for local police departments, sheriff's offices and jails are reaching farther down on their civil service lists to find candidates still interested in job openings.
“When someone is suspended, they never tell us why they were suspended,” Serafini, the retired captain, said during part of his deposition.
What about other forms of discipline taken against an officer, such as a demotion or a transfer? Would he then be told?
“Not specifically, no,” Serafini said.
“Would it have been helpful for you as … a captain and a supervisor, manager to have an understanding of conduct and misconduct that officers in your charge were engaged in?"
“Yes,” Serafini said.
Retired Chief Kevin Brinkworth testified that he, too, would have liked having access to the disciplinary records of his officers.
Said Brinkworth: “If I had their records, obviously if you see a pattern, you might be able to preempt some of their behaviors.”
Lawyers for the group Black Love Resists in the Rust, which argues that Mayor Byron W. Brown’s “Strike Force” set up checkpoints targeting drivers of color, have gathered up internal emails and records. To read the full story, click here.
