Buffalo police suppressing crime info

Somewhere in the city Saturday night, two men got into an argument. It escalated into a gang beating involving 10 other men. The beating was a bad one and, as the police incident report said, the victim was bandaged up afterwards.

Normally, this would be worth a brief in the paper. Not a murder, but newsworthy nonetheless.

Ditto for a Rite Aid employee who was caught with five bottles of prescription drugs in his pants pockets. The police report said the employee was intending on stealing them and selling on the street.

Again, newsworthy.

I came across these two reports while covering the police beat Sunday. Neither report made it into the paper, however. It's the byproduct of an effort by the Buffalo Police Department over the past couple of months to cut back on the information included in incident reports made available to the press.

This follows a series of incidents over the past year-and-a-half that have involved, among other things, Deputy Commissioner Daniel Derenda (I originally had the first name wrong) storming into the press office at Police HQ to confront a reporter about a story in the works, Mayor Byron Brown lobbying to get a crime story killed, his press secretary suggesting a lead on a story and police officials demanding that The News clear crime items before publishing them.

Along the way, Police Commissioner H. McCarthy Gipson has wondered aloud in front of a reporter as to why he should make it "easy" for the press to do its job and Brown raised the specter of limiting The News' access to routine police reports.

The News is able to access incident and arrest reports via a computer in a press office in Police HQ. Last year department officials threatened to deny The News continued access to these reports. They became especially irate after we ran a story in October 2007 detailing how the police failed to alert the public about a serial predator who had been terrorizing old people in the Broadway-Fillmore area. The next business day, we were informed we were losing our computer access to police reports.

The department backed off its threat after a face-to-face meeting between the mayor and our editor, Margaret Sullivan, who was, and remains, strong in her belief that the press requires continued access to police records to inform the public. I guess the mayor didn't like the prospect of being tagged in the paper as restricting the public's right to know.

But that didn't end the administration's effort to limit what the police share with the press, and therefore, the public. Instead, routine information is now often omitted from incident reports. It's been going on for a couple of months now.

I've covered police on and off for more than 20 years and I've never seen such incomplete reports as I did Sunday. I quizzed some of my colleagues, who say the same thing. A lot less information, a lot less cooperation filling in the blanks.

In the case of the aforementioned gang beating, no location was mentioned in the report, aside from the police district it occurred in. No address on the victim. Bare bones.

As for the drug theft, the report said it occurred at a Rite Aid. No store address. No address on the defendant, either. Again, not a whole lot to work with.

Until a couple of months ago, police reports routinely included the address of the crime scene. We also got the address of defendants charged with crime, usually with an age or date of birth. Enough to write a respectable brief, maybe even a short story.

This lack of information would not be as much of a problem if the reporter could pick up the phone and talk to the cops. But the department imposed an edict in March 2007 precluding all but a handful of police department employees from talking to reporters. Not even most higher-ups are permitted to talk.

Precinct lieutenants? No. The lieutenant who runs homicide? Not without permission. Rank-and-file cops, the ones who really know what is going on? You've got to be kidding?! Even the technicians who input the reports have been told to not provide reporters with even the most basic information, such as street addresses, if we come looking for missing details.

The only ones authorized to speak to reporters are Mike DeGeorge, the department's civilian spokesman, and Gipson and his two deputy commissioners. DeGeorge has become the go-to guy, but the problem is, when reporters call him, he often knows less than we do.

Sometimes he gets the information. Sometimes quickly. Sometimes not so quickly. Problem is, we're in the business of news, not history, especially in this era of instant news via the Web.

(My own experience with DeGeorge: The last two times I called him, including Monday, to discuss this post, he failed to return the call).

We didn't abuse the access we had to reports. We keep the names of sex crime victims out of the paper. Ditto for many elderly victims. And we use discretion when it comes to naming other crime victims and where they live. We're mindful of protecting victims and witnesses and not compromising ongoing investigations.

How we use the details contained in the crime reports was never an issue in discussions The News had with police and administration officials. Implied throughout this process it that it's largely a matter that officials in City Hall and Police HQ don't like some of the stories we've written and they'd like to see less crime news in the paper. And one way of doing that is making it harder for reporters to do their jobs. Limit their access to people, put less information in the paperwork.

This tactic runs counter to the trend nationwide, where a growing number of police departments are making more and more crime information available to the press and public, often via the Web.

Comments

[joeblow]

What about the information withheld by the SCHOOLS idiots? What about the amount of violence in the schools. It's difficult for you all to do your job because the paper stinks.

[Howard]

It's smoke and mirrors, they removed address and are making it harder because they don't want people to know how dangerous it is out there. The E District is the most dangerous yet they are hailing quality of life issues, where the city is writing tickets on property it owns itself. DeGeorge won't answer that either. SMOKE and MIRRORS

[anony]

when females were being attacked in the elmwood village a year ago, very little information about incidents came thru the press. it came through makeshift email trees and word of mouth. suppressing crime information jeopardizes our safety and should be illegal. We all have a right to know what we need to protect ourselves. there should be more information, not less.

[Simple Country Lawyer]

This is nothing new. There are Departmental policies in effect that control problematic paperwork. For instance, it is Departmental policy that while directing a homicide investigation, that the Chief of the Homicide Bureau shall put nothing in writing, no documents, no memos, no responses to detectives' P-73's, 1192s, etc. This policy also keeps helpful or damaging information from the hands of defense lawyers. The policy sometimes results in the convictions of innocent persons. The District Attorney knows about these policies and enjoys these results.

[JoeSchmoe]

If people knew the power the Buffalo Police Union and officials have and wield, as compared to other local Police forces, that would help explain why these individuals feel the entitlement to do whatever they want to do whether it's right or wrong, moral or ethical, and even legal or not. It's amazing when you talk to most off duty Buffalo Cops, they believe they are above humanity as compared to other local police officers. Thank God I don't live in the City or visit it often.

[zach]

It's Danny Derenda, not Dennis, the Deputy Commis. He's all about the numbers, that's as deep as he goes.

[paul smith]

Nice going Buffalo Police Dept!!!The Buffalo News is nothing more than a low life ,ultra left wing liberal, rag paper.They are always judging others but we never hear about the dirt within their own organiztion...for example, the huge tax breaks this joint got over the years!!!

[Bob]

Why is this article, which I believe vital information, only being carried in a blog!?!
Why not on the front page of the News itself? This is of much more importance than todays front page of school students moving into their new apartments.
I am outraged at the "duck-and-hide" nature of the Buffalo Police, Mayor and Schools!

[BobbyCat]

Censorship is a not so subtle sign of a repressive government. If Mayor Brown thinks that he can spin the news by censoring it, he will find himself out of a job and standing in a soup line, sharp suit and all.

On the other hand, if this is just bad police policy, then the Mayor must make a command decision and instruct the Police Commish to fix it.

But it's still unclear to me whether Mayor Brown has the b***s to take charge in these situations.

[anonymous]

i called to get a police report on a cold case homicide from 1994 and they gave me the runaround. finally i got an answering machine and left a message. of course they never called me back. probably too busy writing tickets.

[zanna vaida]

After the reading all comments on this blog, my observation has a clear view. The news reporters can speculate and provoke; however, no one mentions a word "ethics." Don't they exist in any organization: private or public?

[Mr. Robert Szanski]

When the police commisioner told everyone on TV that the man attacking us on Broadway and Memorial was just unrelated crimes. My wife and I just got sick. We moved away now, and we miss going to our old church and friends. Why must the police hide thses things.The man plead guilty to 20 crimes and the News reported that the Judge said the same person did all of the robberies. Who was the liar now, I ask you?

Mr. Robert Szanski
{Former Buffalo Taxpayer}

[anonymous]

It's only about the numbers for this administration. Citi Stat, remember this waste of money? They want and demand the Police to get numbers(city ordinance summonses) to make themselves look good and then they manipulate those numbers any way they want. How about all those cameras installed throughout the city. How much did that cost and whose friend got the contract? They are not clearing any crimes. Just more visual fluff.

[Achai Kamau]

When one cannot solve his problems, the next best option is to hide them.

[Chancellor Carlyle Roberts, II]

Given that the press doesn't report news but, instead, manipulates it in order to get people to draw specific conclusions; since the media tries to act like a court of law - trying cases itself in the "court of public opinion" (opinion that is whatever the media tells us it is); since the media no longer does fact checking or report all sides of a story; it doesn't deserve access to police reports.

Go back to being real reporters who actually reported FACTS before you idiots whine about being denied access.

[Charles]

Have you tried working with the state's Open Government guru Robert Freeman?

[constable2915]

The new practice of the police not providing more crime information to the press is an attempt on the part of the city administration to downplay the seriousness of the crime problem. Look who the current police commissioner and mayor are. When the Irish, Italians, Germans and Poles ruled the city, there was much less crime. The police need to return to walking beats and delivering justice at the end of a nightstick as they once did.

[Mrs. Helen Jensen]

THE ANSWER IS VERY CLEAR. IF YOU {BFLO. NEWS} DIDN'T FIND OUT ABOUT IT-IT DIDN'T HAPPEN. MANIPULATING STATISTICS WILL BLOW UP IN THIER FACE SOONER THAN LATER. THIS IS JUST A ONE TERM ADMINISTRATION,IF IT EVEN LASTS THAT LONG. DeGEORGE IS IN THE WAR ROOM TRYING TO COME UP WITH AN EXPLANATION. FORGET IT. THE ONLY ONE IS STUPIDITY.

HELEN JENSEN
PROGRESSIVE BLOCK CLUB

***************************
Buffalo Police spokesman Michael J. DeGeorge said Clark was shot near the intersection at about 8 p.m.

He then went about a half block to the 300 block of Hewitt where he collapsed in a driveway, police reported.

A Rural/Metro Medical Services ambulance transported Clark to ECMC.

The case is being investigated by Homicide Unit detectives.

It was unclear why police officials waited until this morning to report the Monday night shooting.

Records show that Clark has three criminal court convictions, including two for criminal possession of a weapon.

[Former Riverside Resident]

The Buffalo Police do not do a good job. If they did a lot of good people would not have moved out of the city. Quality of Life? The police and the politicians have no clue how bad it really is because they don't live in the troubled neighborhoods. Crime is rampant ,don't believe the guys in the suits when they tell you it is better.

[it hurts]

The BPA are "Butt Boys" for the Mayor. If he ask them to lie for easy Overtime they "Bob" their heads and comply.

[zach]

The police do what they are told. Derenda is a numbers man, that's all there is to it. He's not qualified to run the police dept. He himslef lives in Grand Island, which is illegal

[Do it because BB said so]

O. K. Zach

So if the Mayor told a Cop to jump off the top of the HSBC Building Head first--- he would do it

Right ?

[Know It All]

why hasnt the news done any research on the violence in bps. summer school has been a violent mess. oh yeah, jimmy williams and wilmers have the news in their pockets. are you listening peter simon?

[Danny Boy]

The Buffalo News is scared of this administration. Write another feel good story about quality of life improvement based on fictional stats while Gipson lives in amherst.

[Slumlord]

You be talking bout the Commish

aka, the Slumlord from Williamsville