Reply With QuoteThe infamous Linda D. from Lovejoy? Purported to be a Copper's best friend?Originally Posted by rocking ron
LOL
the Post Urinal being used to belittle another paper
To those of you that took English classes in the Buffalo area (either high school or college), did the teachers ever use the Buffalo News as an example of poor writing that isn't fit for school assignments let alone publication?
I saw it happen more than once with the post urinal when going to JCC, and I think in high school a few times
wow, I can't believe I just sort of defended the snooze
Vote for freedom, not political parties.
Politicians need to cut spending
The infamous Linda D. from Lovejoy? Purported to be a Copper's best friend?
Sadly, once again a serious thread has been destructively sidetracked by trolls.
Open & accountable policing, plus access to information about crimes affecting public safety, are essential to both quality of life & a successful democracy.
The latest from Jim Heaney:
http://www.buffalonews.com/home/story/408105.html
Police withhold crime details
News editor says paperis prepared to fight it
By James Heaney NEWS STAFF REPORTER, Updated: 08/06/08 6:45 AM
Two city residents reported a home invasion to police Tuesday. Two men broke into their house at about 4 a. m., threatened them with a gun and demanded cash before making off with a laptop computer and a couple of Xboxes.
You might want to know if it happened in your neighborhood. Better yet, if it happened on your street.
Buffalo police aren’t saying. The incident report only said in what police precinct it happened.
Police incident reports made available to the public and media used to routinely identify where crimes occur, the address and ages of those arrested and other details.
But no longer. In the past two months, police officials have started to suppress basic crime information.
“This is a clear case of the public’s right to know what’s going on in their city,” said Buffalo News Editor Margaret M. Sullivan. “We’re prepared to fight about it.”
The clampdown on information follows a department edict last year that prohibits all but a handful of police brass from talking to reporters and a series of episodes in which Mayor Byron W. Brown, Police Commissioner H. Mc-Carthy Gipson and their subordinates
have confronted Buffalo News reporters and editors expressing their unhappiness over the paper’s crime coverage.
Brown declined to comment through a spokesman, deferring to police officials. Gipson did not return a telephone call seeking his comment.
Department spokesman Mike De- George acknowledged police have reduced the amount of information re-lased in incident reports but said the department has legitimate reasons for doing so.
“It was felt the department was being hurt for investigative reasons by having some of the information out there,” he said.
He also said protecting crime victims was an issue.
“There was a concern about protecting the citizens and public safety,” he added.
The News first reported on the suppression of information Tuesday on one of its blogs, “Outrages & Insights,” which resulted in a five-fold increase in traffic. As a result of the blog post, the restrictions were discussed Tuesday during a routine weekly meeting between Brown and senior department officials. DeGeorge said there was no talk of revisiting the changes.
News police reporters say they honor department requests to withhold sensitive information from stories and take care to not publish information that puts crime victims at further risk.
Sullivan said withholding basic information such as the location of crime scenes does not serve the public.
“The best way to protect the citizens of Buffalo is to keep them well informed about what’s going on in their city,” she said.
Moreover, Sullivan recently learned that the police began to limit information after top officials had told her in the spring that they planned no changes.
At issue are online incident reports available in the press room at Police Headquarters. Until a couple of months ago, these reports provided a basic, if sometimes incomplete, narrative of incidents. The location of the crime was almost always listed, as were the address and age of anyone arrested.
Last year, department officials threatened to deny The News continued access to these reports. They became especially irate after a story in October 2007 that used the reports to detail how the police failed to alert the public about a serial predator who had been terrorizing elderly residents of the Broadway-Fillmore area.
The next business day, Gipson informed The News he was terminating its access to the computer terminal. The department backed off its threat after a series of meetings between police and newspaper editors and reporters, including one between Brown and Sullivan.
Shortly afterward, however — without notice to The News — the department started limiting information in the reports, putting more complete accounts in a database to which the press room did not have access. Crime locations in the reports available to the media are often missing, as is any information on those arrested, except for their names.
This information is considered public record under the state’s Freedom of Information Law.
Vanessa Thomas, one of the paper’s two primary crime reporters, characterized the reports as “bare bones.”
“They’re missing the vital information that gives a true picture as to what really happened,” she said.
If reporters want more information, they have been told to contact De- George, who sometimes, but not always, provides a timely response.
“The Police Department is forcing the media to jump through so many more hoops to get basic information, which ties up our time,” Thomas said. “It means less crime is being reported because we’re using our time trying to find out the most basic information that should be easily available and accessible.”
On top of limiting information in the reports, the department under Brown and Gipson has ordered all but a handful of officials to stop talking to the media. This is a departure from previous administrations.
The no-talk edict has hampered at least one murder investigation.
James Moses, publisher of Artvoice, the alternative weekly, said he had information about a person of interest in the July 2007 murder of a friend. This person of interest had left town but was communicating with Moses. Moses said he called the detective handling the case every day for more than a week but never got a return call.
Finally, Moses said, someone taking messages for the detective told him: “ ‘He’s not going to call you back, he’s not allowed to call you back. If you want, you can call Mike DeGeorge.’ ”
“At that point, I sort of gave up,” Moses said.
The murder remains unsolved.
Niagara District Common Council Member David Rivera, a retired detective sergeant, said sharing basic information with the public is “a good crime-prevention tool.”
He said, “The media should have access to that information. I think the Police Department needs to freely get this information out without any interference.
“If they’re doing this,” he added, “what else are they holding back?”
jheaney@buffnews.com
Not me. I'm from the So Tier, lived in Grant-Amherst for a number of years, and now live in Jamestown.
Your right to buy a military weapon without hindrance, delay or training cannot trump Daniel Barden’s right to see his eighth birthday. -- Jim Himes
Ummm ... it's time for the Buffalo News to try real reporting ... Instead of relying on the police blotter reports, how about investing in a few police scanners and sending reporters out to cover these "serious" crimes first hand?
BTW, I take being called a "troll" by Dick Kern as a compliment.
Your right to buy a military weapon without hindrance, delay or training cannot trump Daniel Barden’s right to see his eighth birthday. -- Jim Himes
double post!
Your right to buy a military weapon without hindrance, delay or training cannot trump Daniel Barden’s right to see his eighth birthday. -- Jim Himes
Come on Linda, give the man a break. This is a decent story, whether you want to admit it or not. The BPD holding information is not a good thing. What's next, that the Bush administration has done a wonderful job?Ummm ... it's time for the Buffalo News to try real reporting ... Instead of relying on the police blotter reports, how about investing in a few police scanners and sending reporters out to cover these "serious" crimes first hand?
BTW, I take being called a "troll" by Dick Kern as a compliment.
The Bflo News is obviously serious. The 6:45 Headline has been changed as of 8:20 AM, adding:
Buffalo police routinely withhold basic crime details
8:20 AM headline6:45 AM headline
Police withhold crime details
News editor says paper is prepared to fight it
By James Heaney NEWS STAFF REPORTER
Updated: 08/06/08 6:45 AM
http://www.buffalonews.com/home/story/408105.html
Buffalo police routinely withhold basic crime details
News editor says paper is prepared to fight it
By James Heaney NEWS STAFF REPORTER
Updated: 08/06/08 8:20 AM
Speculation isn't information
What is basic info? Any individual must be protected by privacy rights. Media speculate. What really happens can be viewed completely different. Don't judge from first impresion.
Have you ever hurt about organizational culture, ethics, rules and regulations. Don't you comply?
If we take a report regarding an incident the Admin is sending them back if there is a felony crime on the report. They are making us replace the charge with a misdemeanor charge. Similar to what Amherst has done for yrs in order to get them into the "safest city" category. This Admin has gone out of it's way to keep the media from seeing what goes on in the City of Bflo on a daily basis. When a reporter has to call your wife, then meet a Cop at an undisclosed location to find out what happened at an incident, it is pretty sad. It is pathetic that the Dept doesn't let Cops, who are right there, not talk to the media. It is just another case of this Admin not wanting the public to know what is really happening. I've seen murders not even covered in the News. Pathetic.
"Deerhunter": Your information above is one of few constructive values for anonymous posters on SUWNY.
I forwarded it (anonymously) to Jim Heaney. I'd suggest that other cops having important info on this issue should email him as well. Heaney will protect your confidentiality, as do all reporters, when anonymity is constructive.
Heaney's email address: jheaney@buffnews.com
On a much different note, here is the issue from the mouth of Illuzzi, posted as 'tomorrow' always priding himself on being 'fast breaking'!!
http://politicsny.net/
August 7, 2008
BUFFALO NEWS: POOOOOR MARGARET SAYS TO THE COPS
"We're prepared to fight about it."
Buffalo News Editor Margaret Sullivan & the "Iago" of the local media scene, Buffalo News reporter Jim Heaney, are mad at the Buffalo Police Department. The reason the Cops aren't sharing enough crime details with the News as they have done in the past according to a News article.
DUH!
The reason why: The hallmark of the NEWS entry, or a "bi product thereof", into the new age world of cyber space is to report crimes as they happen. Obviously, listening to the police scanner; the News updates its web almost exclusively with these silly crime scene reports that no one cares about, for the most part anyway.
One can extrapolate: The cops are concerned about two things, corrupting a crime scene, putting curious citizens potentially in harms way.
The result: The cops do not have enough time to secure the scene this kind of thing.
As one who knows exclusively the quality of the News legal representation; I wouldn't be to concerned if I were Mayor Brown or Commissioner Gibson!
Its actually rather silly, Margaret! ###
Josephilluzzi704@aol.com
I noticed that with his BS dates. The following day's date. Some people have to really reach I suppose.
Buffalo Web Hosting and Graphic Design
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Way to completely miss the point.YAAAWWWNNNN! Another feeble attempt to find "conspiracy" and "evil" where none exists.
I don't think that either of those stories would make it into either the Jamestown Post-Journal or the Dunkirk Observer except on the slowest of news days -- and small town newspapers are notorious for publishing mundane "news". Now, the Olean Herald might print it since there's lots less crime in Catt County, so any crime would be "big news" there (j/k Catt County folks)!
More to the point, that the Buffalo News failed to publish these "news stories" is hardly an indictment of the Buffalo Police Department having "suppressed" crime info. Isn't it reporters' jobs to find news stories???Since this blogger obviously found them, they weren't suppressed. They simply weren't worthy of a news conference.
One beautiful thing about having a government of the corporations, by the corporations, and for the corporations is that every disaster is measured in terms of economic loss. It's sort of like getting your arm sheared off in a car accident and thinking, "Damn, now it'll take longer to fold the laundry" as blood spurts from your arteries. - The Rude Pundit
Again, Deerhunter, what you are talking about isn't what Kern or the News is talking about. You are talking about police officials routinely changing reports that end up as statistics and about the police department not wanting cops talk to the media. Kern and the News are whining because the police aren't serving them up all the juicy details on a silver platter.
The relationship between law enforcement and the news media has always been somewhat tense. LE is willing to feed the media info it wants to get out, but doesn't like to give them anything more than the bare essentials. As far as I know, LE never wants "cops" talking to the media on their own -- and that's been the way it is for decades, and that's not just an issue in Buffalo. Try finding out something from the State police -- even when you have relatives with the local SP and there's a crazed cop killer roaming the country-side (remember good ol' boy, Bucky Phillips?).
Your right to buy a military weapon without hindrance, delay or training cannot trump Daniel Barden’s right to see his eighth birthday. -- Jim Himes
the mayor doesn't want the truth to be told to the media. That is why Bflo Cops can't talk to reporters on the air. And as far as the SP, I know someone that was actually ordered to talk to the media, against their personal wishes. BPD are prohibited because of the paranoid mayor does not want the views of street Cops being put out to the public. We see much of the crime first hand, the mayor knows it, and wants to muzzle it. That is what you get with Brown. The only mayor in my life to have a Cop outside the door of his City Hall office, another one at his house on Blaine and another , now Lieutenant ,driving him around in one of his 2 take home vehicles.
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