Buffalo Police Commissioner responds to the NYCLU’s analysis of police misconduct records.
Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia rejects the New York Civil Liberties Union’s (NYCLU) call for civilian oversight of the Buffalo Police Department (BPD) and said that internal officer misconduct investigations have got “substantially better” thanks to training and technology.
Gramaglia made the comments in response to the NYCLU’s analysis of over 900 internal police misconduct investigations conducted by the BPD.
Speaking to WBFO for the first time regarding the findings, Gramaglia defended the department’s current internal investigations practices and said that the records, which span 1995 to 2023, do not accurately reflect internal investigations in recent years.
The BPD investigates complaints made against officers through its Internal Affairs Division.
“We are seeking the truth of whatever that truth is in an investigation,” Gramaglia said. “We want the facts, and then we will move forward appropriately with those set of facts.”
The NYCLU’s analysis is the first of multiple data releases concerning complaints made against Buffalo Police Officers and the ensuing internal investigations. That means the dataset is incomplete. The records in this release pertain to active and recently retired officers according to the NYCLU.
The NYCLU found that of 934 separate police misconduct investigations, complaints were “sustained” 86 times, meaning the complaint was upheld and the officer found at fault. Of those 86 sustained investigations, only 38 officers were reprimanded according to the NYCLU.
Twenty-eight were suspended for at least one day and no officers were fired or put on probation.
Below are excerpts of Gramaglia’s responses to the NYCLU’s analysis and WBFO’s reporting.
Discipline
he NYCLU’s findings indicate that police officers are rarely disciplined for wrongdoing – of 86 “sustained” investigations just 38 officers were reprimanded – but Gramaglia disagreed with that assessment.“
What we want is the truth of the matter when a complaint is filed,” Gramaglia said. “And you know, just because a number of complaints are made, it doesn’t mean that they’re true and it doesn’t mean that they’re not true. And where we have sufficient evidence that a rule and regulation was violated, our manual procedures were violated, we will certainly move forward with discipline.
“Gramaglia said that the outcome of “not sustained” – indicating insufficient evidence to determine the validity of a complaint – has been used “far less” since the introduction of body cameras in 2019, which aid in investigating allegations of police misconduct.
“I can say in my time as commissioner now in over two and a half years, I could probably count on one hand the number of times I might have used “not sustained,”” he stated.”
Don’t hold me to the exact number here, but I just know that it is very far and few between, because our investigations have gotten substantially better.”
Gramaglia put the claimed improvements down to continued training for internal affairs investigators and the increasing amount of surveillance technology available to support investigations, such as cameras belonging to privately owned businesses and homes.
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