Class action sought in Buffalo Police racial profiling lawsuit

BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) — For years, minority residents of Buffalo have spoken out about discriminatory police stops, which they say have often resulted in multiple tickets, sometimes for the same infraction.

In addition, Buffalo Police Department data showed that minority drivers were about three times more likely to be stopped than white drivers, based on a News 4 Investigates analysis published in 2022.

In 2018, nine members of Black Love Resists in the Rust, a Buffalo organization that focuses on alternatives to policing to reduce harm to minorities, made these allegations in a federal civil rights lawsuit.

On Wednesday, attorneys for the organization said that since filing the lawsuit, they’ve identified about 6,000 additional minority drivers who were stopped by police at checkpoints and cited for multiple tinted window tickets.

The attorneys are now seeking class action certification to represent all minority drivers they can identify who were impacted by “unconstitutional and discriminatory practices of the Buffalo Police Department.”

In addition, the attorneys want an injunction to force the police department to reform policies to deter discriminatory practices, which plaintiffs said have continued despite the lawsuit.

Claudia Wilner, the director of litigation and advocacy for the National Center for Law and Economic Justice, said in federal court that these policing practices continue, which “have greatly harmed and continue to harm Black and Latino communities.”

City officials have denied the allegation that police stop motorists based on the color of their skin.

Hugh Russ, an attorney representing the city, said during most of the time period cited in the lawsuit, the city had a Black Mayor and police commissioner, along with “a number of Black police officers.”

“It is just difficult to concede that the kind of discriminatory animus the plaintiffs cite existed,” Russ said.

But Wilner and the team of attorneys came armed to federal court with data that showed massive disparities in who received multiple tinted windows tickets in a single stop.

Wilner said the rate of Black and Latino drivers cited for multiple tinted window tickets was 15 percent higher than for white drivers. At its worst, 90 percent of Black drivers cited for tinted windows received multiple tickets, sometimes for each window.

Police issued about 52,000 tinted window tickets in a 10-year period ending in 2022. Wilner said 73 percent of those tickets went to Black and Latino drivers.

The allegations center around police checkpoints, which she said were largely set up in minority neighborhoods. A motivating factor to the checkpoints and ticketing was to raise revenue for the city, she said.

The city “can’t just put its head in the sand and allow discrimination to happen,” Wilner said in court.

Russ said testimony from officers did not imply that revenue from tickets was a motivation for the checkpoints and vehicle stops.

“While there have been documents and other evidence seeming to suggest the city was trying to raise revenue through the issuance of one or more traffic tickets, all the individual officers who testified … said that was not their motive,” Russ said.

Russ said the police department launched checkpoints because residents of East Buffalo neighborhoods asked for more police presence.

“The first and motivating principle of the checkpoints was traffic safety,” Russ said.

The city has since stopped checkpoints, Russ said, and “there is no future intent to do them.”

Bianca Bassett, a member of Black Love Resists in the Rust, said during a press conference they are demanding a commitment from the city to permanently end racially biased policing and excessive ticketing.

“Communities like ours, mostly Black, poor and immigrant communities, have consistently been ignored, under resourced, and almost consistently surveilled by the Buffalo Police Department,” Bassett said.

“Even these obvious examples of racism by BPD have been brushed under the rug and ignored,” she said.

In February 2022, News 4 Investigates asked Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia if the department has a racial bias problem.

“I do not,” Gramaglia said. “I think our department has worked very diligently on training over the years, over many years. I also think we have one of the most diverse makeups in our department in many years. I think we have a very professional police department.”

Wilner said during a press conference on the steps of federal court that the commissioner continued to deny that the police department engaged in racial profiling.

“I think it’s an ostrich approach where he’s refusing to look into the data that’s out there because he doesn’t want to know the results of what that data would show,” Wilner said. “I think the commissioner doesn’t want to have that information because he doesn’t want to correct it.”

Hon. Christina Reiss, chief judge for the U.S. District of Vermont, did not decide on the request for the injunction and class action certification.

Attorneys said it could take several months before that decision is filed.

The city said in a statement that it doesn’t comment on pending litigation.

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Dan Telvock is an award-winning investigative producer and reporter who has been part of the News 4 team since 2018. See more of his work here and follow him on Twitter.

Trina Catterson joined the News 4 team in 2024. She previously worked at WETM-TV in Elmira, a sister station of WIVB. See more of her work here.

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