Q&A with Buffalo News police reporters

I've got a story in today's paper, a follow on Tuesday's blog post, on efforts by the Buffalo Police Department to suppress crime news. Here's a companion Q&A with Vanessa Thomas and T.J. Pignataro, who are The News' two primary police reporters.

Vanessa has worked the day shift for the past six years. T.J. has covered nights for more than five years. They work out of a press office in Buffalo police headquarters and often report from crime scenes. I interviewed them Tuesday about the way police brass have been making it harder for them to do their job informing the public. They collaborated on their answers, and thus speak as one.

The police department brass has taken a couple of steps to restrict your access to information and personnel. What do you think has triggered that?

"The mayor appears to be focused on maintaining a positive image of the city as much as possible and control the flow of information. When the mayor took office and appointed his top police brass, there seemed to be an underlying quest to make the city appear to be as safe a possible.

"For example, the mayor's spokesman, Peter Cutler, once tried to tell one of us what the lead of the story should be, and insisted what information should be put at the bottom of the story.

"A few months into the Brown administration, access to police supervisors was eliminated. Then, it was reduced further after the March 2007 appointment of Mike DeGeorge as spokesman. Only DeGeorge, Commissioner Gipson and the two deputy commissioners were authorized to speak with the press.

"The move didn't only upset reporters. It also upset police supervisors who were long trusted to speak with the media. They were also upset because information was being filtered and diluted from police brass, lacked important details and was sometimes inaccurate."

Talk about the changes in incident reports you use as the starting point for reporting crime.

"Within the past few months, incident reports have been pared to absolute bare bones. Often times, they lack the address of the incident, time of the incident, victim's age and address and significant details about the alleged crime.

"Police officials say they moved this information to a different computer database in the department, however, reporters aren't permitted access to this database."

How has that made your job more difficult?

"As the result of the change in the police department's policy and the changes in the incident reports, reporters are forced to take the additional step of contacting DeGeorge to get even the most basic facts about the crime.

"Some reporters covering the police beat say they are sometimes unable to reach DeGeorge to get these essential details. It's impractical to assume he would be available 24/7."

The commissioner has also ordered officers and everyone below the rank of deputy commissioner not to talk to reporters. How has that played out?

"It basically means that the officers doing the investigations and with first-hand knowledge of the cases are silenced.

"As the result, reporters now get information filtered by only a very select few at the top.

"Also, some officers have expressed frustration about having their ability to talk to reporters eliminated and resent when the police brass don't portray the "true story" especially as they know it to be as the case investigators."

How does access and transparency compare with when Tony Masiello was mayor and Rocco Diina was commissioner?

"The previous administration allowed allowed reporters to interview everyone from officers to detectives, detective sergeants, lieutenants, captains, inspectors, chiefs, etc. at crime scenes, at their stations, on their cell phones and so on.

"We had around the clock access and supervisors were trusted to release information to the press at their discretion. There was an expectation that officers shouldn't reflect badly on the police department when being interviewed by reporters."

Comments

[what the heck]

This is not good. information on City crime should be open to the public.

Maybe the Buf News can use the FOIA law the extract this data

[lanres]

There seems to be a concerted effort from City Hall , Police Admin and even the BFD Admin to control public information. When you have absolute rule , you absolutly get abuse. The news has been seen as a "Tool" - keep digging - keep writing - the fact that they try to "Suggest Story Leads" shows blatant manipulation of public opinion. The TV news media is heavily / easily influnced in the same way - they seem to easily be lead to "stories"

[c]

What is happening in City Hall? This administration is nuts, seriously crazy.

[Jeff]

The moral of the story. Don't live in the city. In fact, don't even go to the city.

[c]

EVERYONE HERE SHOULD WRITE A LETTER TO THE EDITOR

[Bruce Wagner]

This problem is much bigger than just the Buffalo Police Department. Just ten years ago, anyone could walk into County Hall and use the computer database to look up conviction records, even housing code violations. The terminals were eliminated around 2000 and were replaced by alphabetical lists of convicted felons. After the Erie County budget crisis, these lists were removed as well and only one employee is available to retrieve criminal records. The law states that the public be given reasonable access to these records and this erosion of access is totally unreasonable.

ARTICLE 2019-a of the NEW YORK STATE JUSTICE COURT ACT

§ 2019-a. Justices' criminal records and docket.

The records and dockets of the court except as otherwise provided by
law shall be at reasonable times open for inspection to the public and shall be and remain the property of the village or town of the residence of such justice, and at the expiration of the term of office of such justice shall be forthwith filed by him in the office of the clerk of such village or town, provided, however, that if such records and dockets are transferred pursuant to section twenty hundred twenty-one of the uniform district court act, the responsibility for such records and dockets by the city, village or town shall cease and they shall be the property of the district court to which they are transferred. The record of every criminal action shall state the names of the witnesses sworn and their places of residence, and if in a city, the street and house number; and every proceeding had before him. It shall be the duty of every such justice, at least once a year and upon the last audit day of such village or town, to present his records and docket to the auditing board of said village or town, which board shall examine the said records and docket, or cause same to be examined and a report thereon submitted to the board by a certified public accountant, or a public accountant and enter in the minutes of its proceedings the fact that they have been duly examined, and that the fines therein collected have been turned over to the proper officials of the village or town as required by law. Any such justice who shall willfully fail to make and enter in such records and docket forthwith, the entries by this section required to be made or to exhibit such records and docket when reasonably required, or present his records and docket to the auditing board as herein required, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and shall, upon conviction, in addition to the punishment provided by law for a
misdemeanor, forfeit his office.

The only public access provided for criminal records is through the NYS Unified Court System's Office of Court Administration for $55 per search. The results are flawed and only include records that are reported by the county clerks, a low priority with staff cuts. The News should expand this story and look county and statewide. Check out the article in the Syracuse Post Standard:

Want to know if your new hire has a criminal record? Good luck
Sunday, July 08, 2007
By John O'Brien
Staff writer
The state's service that lets the public check someone's criminal background has gaping holes.
The Office of Court Administration's system is supposed to keep track of every criminal conviction in the state. For a $52 fee, you're supposed to be able to find out if your prospective baby sitter, employee or date has a criminal past.
But that's not what you get. The database is missing 12 years' worth of convictions from town and village courts, 1991 through 2002, and doesn't include crimes from 80 percent of those courts after that.
That means you won't detect a conviction of menacing in, say, the village of Skaneateles a couple of years ago or a conviction for falsifying business records in the village of Camillus.
And don't bother visiting your local courthouse to do your own search the old-fashioned way.
OCA officials sent an edict to court clerks across the state in 2003, telling them to stop letting the public do criminal-history searches. Those searchers had to be directed to the OCA's flawed and more expensive 1
statewide search.
"The clerks send you to OCA, but when that search comes back, it's almost useless," said Syracuse private investigator Matt Plummer. In his 46 years in the business, he's never had so much trouble checking someone's criminal history, he said.
Private investigators are hired by employers to see if prospective employees have a criminal past. They used to be able to walk into any court clerk's office and run a search. Now, it's hit and miss - mostly miss when it comes to misdemeanors such as stalking, petit larceny, forgery and falsifying business records.
The $52 cost is the highest in the country, according to Michelle Pyan, a private investigator in Troy. In Florida, the search costs $23 per name. In Washington, it's $10 online.
In New York, OCA nets $16 for each search, and the remaining $36 goes to a program for lawyers assigned to represent poor criminal defendants. Before the 2003 directive, the state made $10 million a year on the searches. Last year, it made $52 million.
The state issued the ban on local searches to make money, according to Laura Weigley Ross, the OCA's assistant deputy chief administrator.
Only four other states ban their local clerks from letting the public do criminal-history searches, according to Mike Sankey, president of Business Resource Bureau Inc. of Tempe, Ariz., which publishes legal reference books.
Pyan, owner of Commercial Investigations LLC in Troy, said New York is the only state she's seen with that policy. Her company does more than 2,000 criminal-history searches a month.
Ross concedes that the system needs fixing.
She was asked what people should do to find convictions missing from the state system if they can't search local records.
"To tell you the truth, I don't really know," Ross said.
An OCA spokesman, David Bookstaver, said the agency will try to address the problem. "If there is a gap, our objective is to be as thorough as possible," he said.
Public's right to know
Albany County Clerk Thomas Clingan immediately took a stand against the OCA directive. He told the agency in a 2003 letter that the criminal records in his office were county property, not the state's, and that he would be violating the state judiciary law if he forbade people to search them.
"The public has a right to come in and get at these records directly," Clingan said in an interview. In his letter, Clingan told the state that he could be sued by people who make their living researching criminal records if he turned them away.
The records in Albany County and Onondaga County are open and free to anyone who walks in and uses a computer terminal. But those counties rely on their own databases, not the state's, so they're not violating the 2003 directive, Bookstaver said.
Someone searching the criminal records in the Onondaga County clerk's office with ease might be surprised if he walked across the street to the Syracuse City Court clerk.
"We tell people, 'We can't do searches,' " said Lucia Sander, city court clerk. Such requests are referred to the OCA, she said.
A statewide association of private investigators, the people most frustrated by the state's policy, is looking at the issue and could take legal action, according to Syracuse private investigator William Sullivan.
"It's easier to search criminal records in Zimbabwe than to get them in courts here," he said.
Police aren't hampered by OCA's incomplete database. They have access to the state Division of Criminal Justice Services database, which contains all criminal convictions.
$52 per name, not person
OCA's search has another major flaw, Sullivan said. If someone has gone by different names, such as a married woman who takes her husband's surname or someone who uses an apostrophe or hyphen, the researcher would have to pay $52 per name. Sullivan said he recently paid OCA $364 for the background of a woman who'd been married five times.
Other state agencies, such as the Department of Motor Vehicles, have ways to search the same person using multiple names for just one fee, Sullivan said.
The state's database is no longer missing a massive number of town and village court convictions. This year, for the first time, all 1,500 town and village courts, along with the 62 counties, report their convictions to the state system. But the gaps remain for anything from 1991 to as late as 2006.
Oneida City Court convictions were among those missing during that period.
As a test, The Post-Standard tried to search the name of a woman convicted in 1999 of endangering the welfare of a child in that court. A City Court official told a reporter he could only search by going to OCA. That search showed the woman to have no criminal convictions. The newspaper published a story in 1999 saying she'd been convicted of failing to seek medical help for her infant son after he'd broken his leg.
The OCA's reports come with a disclaimer about the missing records.
The gap in data sometimes includes felonies, according to Bruce Wagner, a private investigator in Buffalo. He paid for the $52 search and OCA found no convictions for one man. But a search on the database kept by the state prison system showed the man was serving a lengthy prison sentence for murder, Wagner said.
"What irks me is that if I'm Joe Citizen and a guy moves in next door," Wagner said, "I don't have the right to go down to the county courthouse and see if he has a criminal record."
John O'Brien can be reached at jobrien@syracuse.com or 470-2187.
© 2007 The Post-Standard. Used with permission.

Copyright 2007 syracuse.com. All Rights Reserved.

[WOW]

I guess the mayor thinks this may be a way to hide what really happens in buffalo. I guess this way he can say he has fixed crime but the citizens will not know he is just hiding it. This way when his kid breaks the law again he can hide it.

[bakm]

The Buffalo News has a successful track record in contacting the New York Department of State Committee on Open Government.

Maybe once again the News will come to the aid of our region.

[ito]

"hate me now" - Have you followed this issue at all? It isn't about the officers not speaking to the News, though that detail does evidence the restriction of the flow of information by the city. It's about the city making it difficult (and sometimes impossible) to report on these newsworthy stories at all. You ask the reporters to "report the news" - I think that's all they are trying to do.

[wageslave]

One solution is to use a scanner to track the calls for service as they occur and report this information. I did a project in which I connected a police scanner to a computer and used software to break each transmission into a seperate audio file then scanned thru the files recording the location and nature of the call into a database. This information was plotted onto a street map of the city using GIS software to show where the heaviest call traffic was occuring- somewhat labor intensive but it provides a clear picture of what is occuring, when and where.
Don't rely on the filtered reports you get from a source with a vested interest in how the information is used.

[RealBuff]

regarding searching for criminal records, I found a free (beta) website that works well: http://www.criminalsearches.com/

[Dave]

Corporations don't have to be transparent. We don't pay them with our tax dollars. You've missed the point completely.

[James Heaney, Outrages & Insights author]

Hate Me Now: You are misinformed. The information the police are withholding is a matter of public record under the state Freedom of Information Law. The press, or any member of the public, for that matter, have a legal right to the information.

[Chancellor Carlyle Roberts, II]

So, let's see, now a couple of news reporters are whining because they no longer have access to more information to twist and manipulate? Maybe if news reporters today actually REPORTED news instead of twisted it to force the reader to draw specific conclusions they might be trusted with more information.

The average cop on the street or his immediate supervisor does not speak for the Department (the same is true of any government agency); so, the media idiots have no business coming anywhere near them.

If people want accurate crime data (which they will never get from the media), they can access the Department of Justice crime statistics database http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/dtdata.htm.

[Name withheld]

Every time I call the SOS Squad some dope tells me he’s looking into my case, even though I never gave him my name to search for. What kind of losers, do I have to be victimized of my dignity too?

The Detective just blew me off, like it didn't matter to him.

[Brian]

This completely defensive position by the city hurts their image more than if they cooperated with the media. The mayor should beg for crime data to be front page news, then perhaps the city would be safer.

[zach]

I don't get why they would withhold basic info...just to make it "seem" better? Head in the sand tactics?

[Stan]

Don't get "why they would withhold"? If crime is going on in the "better" sections of the city, those bigwigs don't want it to be known, so they won't be "targeted" and their property values affected. The wealthy pull the strings, and the Mayor and the Commissioner are puppets. A few writers are correct...stay out of Buffalo as much as possible, and definitely do not buy property or invest there as things stand. Forbes just told the world this is a "dying" city. The leaders began bleeding the srea 30 years ago and are letting it go all the way.

[Art Klein]

As a City block club leader I worked with several generations of police chief's during the 1980's and 90's.

The best was Gil Kerlikowske who was a strong proponent of community police work. He mandated that the department be part of the community it served and encouraged every level of the department work closely with block clubs and community groups.

Chief Gipson has taken the opposite approach and this has resulted in the very unfortunate image of the police not being part of the community. The separation of the department from the citizens of Buffalo has already been underway because of the fear of the citizen's fear of retribution. By making the separation a matter of policy effectiveness will certainly decline.

The Mayor and the Chief of Police had best be open and frank about crime in the city before all police actions take on the appearance of furtive political action. Just look to current Washington for the results of bunker mentality.

[lanres]

I tried to get a copy of a Police Incident report - every time I went to head quarters they said "The Freedom of information Officer isn't here." Its not the street Cops its Admin. - Be careful when you "Reporters" park or drive in or near the City ? !

[Simple Country Lawyer]

"Clearly and sadly" our lackluster,lying, carpetbagging mayor, Byron Blowhard Brown has again perjured himself with his new lie that the crime records flap was due to "miscommunication". Outrageous, Obviously, he thinks we are all stupid.