City of Buffalo Common Council Police Oversight Committee·September 23, 2026
The Police Commissioner walked the committee through the camera-room file: eight injured-on-duty officers sustained on absence charges in 2024, two on falsifying records, no discipline imposed by summer 2025. Rivera asked about subpoenaing two former commissioners; the Law Department said it can be done. A mother described a July 19 festival incident involving her 16-year-old son; IA’s file closes by end of October. Both items tabled pending investigation.
The resolution at Item 2 was filed by Councilmember Rasheed Wyatt, who was not in the room; the story it rests on was reported by Investigative Post, which the presiding member thanked by name — “if it wasn't for Investigative Post we wouldn't have found out about it.” The Police Commissioner, who took the post after the events in question and said so — “like you all, I'm going back and reviewing files” — gave the committee the account from the file. In the summer of 2024, a supervisor responsible for monitoring officers on injured-on-duty status came to suspect that some of those officers, who were assigned to the department's camera room, “might not be as injured as they were claiming to be.” He pulled the security-camera footage from inside Police Headquarters to see. What he found, the Commissioner said, was not a question of injury but of attendance: the officers “were coming and going on a pretty regular basis and not staying the full duration of their shift.”
The supervisor referred it to Internal Affairs. IA investigated eight officers using the building's cameras. All eight, the Commissioner said, had sustained charges of absence from duty; two had an additional sustained charge of falsifying business records. Wyatt's resolution puts numbers on it from the IA findings: between August 2 and August 13, 2024, the officers collectively claimed about 255 hours on duty while surveillance records indicated fewer than 156. Then the file stalled. The charges were written and signed “in the fall of 2024” under then-Commissioner Gramaglia[*], the Commissioner said, but “for whatever reason the officers were not served with the paperwork” until well into 2025. In the summer of 2025, under a new commissioner — Wright, the presiding member said, and the Commissioner agreed — a determination was made “to sustain all the officers but not to administer any discipline.” The file is closed. “It involves two police administrations, if you will.” Asked what guided the decision, the Commissioner did not speculate: “I don't have available to me what they saw.”
Rivera, presiding, was not inclined to leave it there. Falsifying records, he said, is treated seriously “whether it's government or private business”; he did not know whether anyone had asked the District Attorney about criminality or the Corporation Counsel about recovering pay for hours not worked, and he did not like learning about it “a year later” from the press rather than from the commissioner of the day, who “didn't even call the chair of the police oversight.” “I have a lot of respect for Mr. Gramaglia,” he said. “I don't think many other commissioners would have reached that determination.” Then the question that gave the meeting its shape: does the Council have the power to subpoena both Gramaglia and Wright? Lisa Yeager[*], an assistant corporation counsel who announced herself only at the end of the exchange, said it does, and that she believes both men are still in Erie County and likely in the city. Rivera said he wanted to “dig a little deeper,” to “get into the minds” of the two former commissioners, and asked that the committee “work with the Law Department” on subpoenas for both. “That'll be fine,” Yeager said. No motion to subpoena was made.
Councilmember Zeneta Everhart asked the forward-looking question: at a time when “we're raising taxes” and police overtime is “off the charts,” and with social media in recent weeks showing officers sleeping in their cars on duty, what policies have changed so that officers are “actually doing their job”? The Commissioner's diagnosis was supervision, not paperwork: the policies “are well written,” but “there was not a supervisor assigned to the camera room,” and the shift without anyone else in the building was the overnight. A supervisor was never permanently posted there, the Commissioner said, because on some shifts the camera room has no one in it to supervise. The fixes now under way: reassign injured-on-duty officers to the districts where possible, and consolidate the rest onto a single shift where supervision exists. The item was tabled, 4–0, on Bollman's motion.
Committee: Four of nine Council members were recorded present — David Rivera (Niagara), Bryan Bollman (Lovejoy), Zeneta Everhart (Masten) and Christopher Scanlon (South). Absent: Mitchell Nowakowski (Fillmore), Rasheed Wyatt (University), Council President Joel Feroleto (Delaware), Joseph Golombek Jr. (North) and Majority Leader Leah Halton-Pope (Ellicott). Rivera presided; he is addressed as “Mr. Chair” on the tape, and the chair title itself is not stated in the record. At the top of the meeting the presiding member said that, “for purposes of the quorum,” Bollman and Everhart were being added to the committee.
Administration: the Police Commissioner, not named on the tape or in the record, who described having come to the post after the 2024–25 events under discussion; Lisa Yeager[*], Assistant Corporation Counsel.
Public speakers: one — the mother whose communication is Item 1 (see below).
In police internal-affairs language, a charge is sustained when the investigation finds the allegation supported by the evidence. It is a finding, not a penalty. Under Buffalo's process as the Commissioner described it, the Commissioner then decides the discipline — “that's the final determination the commissioner makes,” as the presiding member put it, and the Commissioner agreed. So a file can end with every officer found to have done what was alleged and nobody penalized, which is what the Commissioner said happened here. That is also why the sequence of commissioners matters: the charges were sustained under one administration and closed without discipline under the next, and the person now answering the committee's questions was in neither. The Council's tool for reaching the two people who were is the one Rivera raised — the subpoena power the assistant corporation counsel confirmed the Council holds. As of Wednesday it is a request to the Law Department, not a motion or a vote.
Item 1 was a communication filed under the name T. Febres; the woman who came to the microphone gave her first name as Tiffany[*] and said she was there “as a mother seeking accountability for what happened to my son” at the Puerto Rican festival — the “grease pole festival,” in her words — on July 19. Her son was 16 at the time and is 17 now. She was not present at the incident. Her prepared statement was about one thing: she said Internal Affairs had told her that “numerous officers” involved in her son's incident did not have body-camera footage. “Body cameras are not simply pieces of equipment,” she said. “When internal affairs tells a mother that numerous officers involved in her son's incident did not have body camera footage, I believe that deserves serious scrutiny, and this is bigger than just my son.” She asked the committee to investigate the body-camera policy, officers' compliance with it, whether officers who fail to activate are disciplined, and the cost to taxpayers of settlements. “I'm not standing here asking you to automatically believe everything I'm saying because I'm a mother. I'm asking you to investigate.”
Asked by Everhart to describe what she believes happened, she gave her son's account and what she said she has seen on footage: he had been leaving, was asked by family to stay, and came back through a gate that was already open; his shoe came off; as he tried to retrieve it, she said, an officer “jumped on him” and then several did, and her son told her he was punched and kicked and felt knees on his chest. She said she took him to the hospital and has photographs. She said a lieutenant she spoke with afterward would not give her names and gave her two different accounts — that her son had been in a fight, then that he had kicked the gate down — and that the body-camera footage she has seen shows him walking through the gate. She also described footage of him being walked with one shoe and his pants fallen below his waist, asking officers to pull them up or return his shoe, and being refused. These are her allegations; the Commissioner did not address the particulars.
What the Commissioner did say: an Internal Affairs complaint was opened “shortly after the incident” and the file is active; IA is examining whether the force used was within policy, whether de-escalation was attempted, and whether officers complied with the body-worn camera policy. “What I can say is there is body-worn camera footage. But I do not know whether every officer had their camera on or not.” An officer who did not, the Commissioner said, “is out of policy,” it is documented in the file, and “they will receive discipline” on a progressive scale. IA “committed to me to have the file closed by the end of October.” Rivera asked for what the committee will want when it does: how many officers were there, how many cameras were on, how many were off, and the disposition. He also asked how long video takes to come out after a file closes — it is available by FOIL request once discipline is set, the Commissioner said — and gave the administration credit for releasing video in “recent incidences,” some of which, he noted, showed the officer was in the right. “I believe that when this investigation is concluded that video should be shown, just like other videos are shown.” “Yes, sir.” The item was tabled until the investigation concludes.
The Commissioner's description of the department's cameras explains why “there is footage” and “numerous officers had none” can both be true. From the start of a tour, each camera runs in buffering mode: it continuously holds the last 30 seconds of video only, no audio, and overwrites it. Nothing is saved until the officer presses the camera. When that happens, the camera keeps the 30 seconds already in the buffer and records video and audio from then on. So an officer who never activates leaves nothing; an officer who activates late leaves 30 silent seconds and then everything after. On a dispatched call, the Commissioner said, policy is to activate when the officer acknowledges the call; at a festival, where officers are already on scene and something happens “spontaneously,” each officer has to make the choice. Some agencies use triggers — a car's lights and siren, or a holster sensor that activates every camera nearby when a gun is drawn — and Buffalo has holster activation, the Commissioner said, but “a standalone officer” still has to hit the button. The Commissioner's view of the written policy, re-read that morning: “comprehensive.” The issue “is not so much the policy but officers complying with the policy.”
The Commissioner had handed each member a folder with the body-camera policy and current crime-trend data, and two members used it. Everhart asked about a seven-day figure of 26 motor-vehicle incidents — heard on the tape as “deaths,” almost certainly thefts (Editor's Note) — and how many were committed by people under 18; the Commissioner did not know and will get it. Bollman asked about the property-crime line, which is up on the prior year, and whether hotspot patrols are being added. The Commissioner's answer separated the categories: burglaries are down 17 percent, and what is driving property crime is larceny, and what is driving larceny is retail theft. Business owners are “really frustrated with the department's inability to address retail theft,” the Commissioner said, and the department is “working with the administration” to “level set some of the policies that were implemented previously” that allow people committing theft “to just walk away from the scene.” The Commissioner said the increase in theft after the department changed its retail-theft handling was “hundreds of percent” for the businesses that bear it, and that two or three East Side stores had closed over it. Bollman named one: the Save-A-Lot on Genesee Street, whose closing he said left the neighborhood without an effective grocery store and was “100 percent directly related to theft” — his characterization, not a finding. “If businesses don't make money,” the Commissioner said, “they're gonna leave Buffalo, and that does nothing for anybody.”
Nothing on Wednesday's docket was approved, denied or sent to the full Council. Every item ended the meeting tabled — which in Buffalo's committee system means it stays in committee, alive, to be taken up again. For the two new items that is deliberate: the presiding member tabled the Febres communication “until the investigation is concluded, and then we can come back and have a conversation,” and the camera-room resolution while the subpoena question goes to the Law Department. The other 20 items (Items 3–22) were already on the table from earlier meetings and stayed there without discussion; they are the committee's standing agenda of police-accountability business — Wyatt's civilian review board request, Halton-Pope's policy-reform and answer-our-questions resolutions, Rivera's letters on an Erie County Sheriff official's April 2024 crash, a three-member letter to Commissioner Wright about a June 2025 incident at a Tops store, a cellblock attendant appointment, and Scanlon's letter asking the Commissioner of Police to attend committee meetings. The Council's two-year rule eventually clears un-acted items off the table; several of these carry 2023 file numbers.
Built from the city's recorded votes (agenda items) and the summary minutes, cross-checked against the tape. Four members sat: Rivera (presiding), Bollman, Everhart, Scanlon; Bollman and Everhart were added to the committee “for purposes of the quorum” at the top of the meeting. No recusals. Both recorded motions were moved by Bollman and seconded by Everhart; the record does not state pass/fail, so the motion name is the outcome. Docket numbers are the city's (26-000xxx); “MT” numbers are the original Council file numbers on carried-over items.
Docket 26-000636. Tabled “until the investigation is concluded.” Commissioner: active IA file opened shortly after the July 19 incident; scope is force-within-policy, de-escalation, and body-worn camera compliance; footage exists; unknown how many officers activated; non-activation is out of policy and disciplinable; IA committed to closing the file by end of October. Committee asks for: number of officers present, cameras on vs. off, disposition, and release of the video afterward. Record vs. tape: the vote record lists the mover as Bollman and the seconder as Everhart but records only two ayes, Rivera and Scanlon; the minutes give the result as “Yes 2, No 0.” On the tape the motion to table is seconded by Everhart and no roll call is audible. Reported as recorded. Flagged for the active internal-affairs matter and the record anomaly.
Docket 26-000628. The resolution calls for a comprehensive investigation of the August 2024 attendance and timekeeping allegations against eight officers assigned to the camera-monitoring operation, including the IA findings, the decision not to discipline, and any pay for hours not worked; asks that findings be presented to a Council committee and address whether policies and supervision are sufficient; and directs copies to the Mayor, Commissioner, IA, and Corporation Counsel. Commissioner's account on the tape: IOD supervisor reviewed HQ security footage; IA sustained all eight on absence from duty, two on falsifying business records; charges signed fall 2024 (Gramaglia[*]), served well into 2025, closed summer 2025 with no discipline (Wright); flaw was no supervisor in the camera room on the overnight shift; IOD officers being reassigned to districts and consolidated to one shift. Presiding member asked about subpoenas for both former commissioners; Assistant Corporation Counsel Yeager[*] confirmed the Council's subpoena power; committee to work with the Law Department. No subpoena motion. Moved Bollman, seconded Everhart; ayes Rivera, Bollman, Everhart, Scanlon.
Dockets 26-000691 through 26-000710. The record shows “Tabled” on each with no mover, seconder or roll call (Item 3's record carries the blank vote line twice). None was discussed on the tape; a single “motion to table” at 34:46, immediately before adjournment, is the only audible action covering them. Reported as tabled per the record. The attachment on Item 7 is a July 28, 2025 letter to Attorney General James “re Granville Matter”; Item 15's is a March 12, 2025 letter to Commissioner Wright regarding April 11, 2024. Item 13's title says June 17 and its attachment June 19.
Seconded by Everhart. The record does not give a time.
What this is built from. The City posted video of the meeting on its CivicClerk portal — the committee's first meeting on the new portal; the audio was extracted and transcribed. The recording runs 34.9 minutes, with roll call at 0:53 and adjournment at 34:48. Timecodes in the motions list are recording positions, not clock times. The agenda items file (with the clerk's recorded roll calls) and the summary minutes were read in full and are the ground truth for dispositions and vote counts; the full text of Wyatt's resolution is taken from the minutes packet.
How incidents are reported here. This committee discusses police conduct. Every characterization above is attributed to the person who made it: the account of the July 19 festival incident is the mother's, as she gave it, and the Commissioner did not address its particulars; the camera-room account is the Commissioner's summary of a closed Internal Affairs file, supplemented by the sponsor's resolution. No officer is named on the tape or in the record, and none is named here. The speaker's son is a minor and is not named. The speaker is identified as the record identifies her (“T Febres”); her first name is from the audio and carries [*]. The location of the festival was not stated on the tape and is not supplied here.
Where the record and the tape disagree. (1) Item 1's vote record names Bollman as mover and Everhart as seconder but records only two ayes, Rivera and Scanlon; the minutes say “Yes 2, No 0.” Four members were present and no dissent is audible. Reported as recorded. (2) Items 3–22 show “Tabled” with no vote; the tape has one “motion to table” at 34:46 and no item-by-item action. (3) Item 3's record carries its blank vote line twice. (4) The record does not identify who presided; the tape has the presiding member addressed as “Mr. Chair” and Everhart following up on “Councilmember Rivera's question” immediately after his; Rivera is described as presiding, and the chair title is not asserted.
Names. Council members are corrected against the verified roster: Whisper's “Bowman” is Bollman; “ever hard,” “ever heard,” “Eberhardt” are Everhart; “Rashid Wyatt” is Rasheed Wyatt; “Leah Holtz and Pope” is Halton-Pope. The current Police Commissioner is not named on the tape or in the record and is not named here. Former commissioners: “Gramalia” / “Remaglia” is rendered Gramaglia and carries [*] because the name appears only in audio; “right” is Wright, which the docket confirms (Items 13 and 15 are letters to Commissioner Wright). “Darius Bridgen,” cited by the speaker, is former Council President Darius Pridgen[*]. Lisa Yeager[*], Assistant Corporation Counsel, gave her name on the record and appears nowhere in the written record. “Investigative Post” is the news outlet named in the resolution. “Dan Daniel Granville” on the tape is the Granville matter named in Item 7's attachment.
A figure that may be misheard. Everhart read a seven-day figure of “26 motor vehicle deaths” from the crime-trend handout and asked how many were “committed by youth.” Twenty-six traffic deaths in a week is not plausible for Buffalo and one does not “commit” a death; the figure is almost certainly motor-vehicle thefts. It is reported as a count of motor-vehicle incidents with this caveat.
Streets and other checks. The street check found one candidate, Genesee Street, which is valid; no street corrections were applied. The interests watchlist was checked against every name, entity and address in the docket and the transcript; no match. The [*] flag marks a name taken from audio alone with no official document to confirm it; verify against the City Clerk's record before quoting.