A county legislative investigation is underway into an incident last April involving the Erie County Sheriff’s Chief of Narcotics, who is accused of hitting several parked vehicles on two different streets on Buffalo’s West Side. Daniel “D.J.” Granville was never charged with anything but paid a $150 fine for jaywalking. Erie County is paying about $60,000 in damage claims.
We know about all of this because of the yeoman’s work of Investigative Post’s Geoff Kelly; WGRZ’s Charlie Specht; and WKBW-TV’s Kristen Mirand. Sandra Tan of the Buffalo News has added some substantial reporting. Kudos to all of them.
Granville works for Sheriff John Garcia who has described the incident as an “accident” while saying he was not investigating the issue, declining to answer media questions seeking further details. He is deferring to an investigation by the Buffalo Police Department about how that Department handled follow up to the “accident.”
The Buffalo P.D. investigation seems appropriate since the Department officer who wrote up the report about the “accident” is the sister-in-law of D.J. Granville. Nothing came of that report.
All of this seems as clear as mud at the moment. Erie County Legislature Chairman Tim Meyers is convening a committee of the whole for an investigation beginning on April 24. Councilman David Rivera is pursuing an investigation into the city’s end of the issue starting on April 17. Republican County Chairman Michael Kracker has issued a statement in strong support of Garcia while Republican county legislators are actively supporting the Legislature’s review. Hmm!
Someone suggested to me that this whole episode is like Nixon and Watergate. That may be a bit of an exaggeration, but there are some parallels.
One of those parallels follows from Senator Howard Baker’s 1973 observation of things. To paraphrase, what did the Sheriff know and when did he know it?
How did Garcia, despite his recent statement, not know that one of the chiefs under his command had a vehicle incident involving a county-owned vehicle resulting in damages to seven other vehicles on two different streets while also damaging the county vehicle? That is not exactly an everyday occurrence.
Someone at the Sheriff’s Department needed to forward some document to the county attorney or county comptroller’s office to arrange for payment to the damaged vehicles hit by the county-owned vehicle. Who signed that document?
Then there is the question about whether Granville was on duty or off duty when the incident occurred. If he was off duty then the charges for the vehicle damages should fall to him.
Reportedly several Buffalo P.D. vehicles responded to the incident. Were there bodycams? A sobriety test? Did the officers on the scene report something different from what Granville’s sister-in-law reported?
This is a pretty messy situation that does not reflect well on either the Sheriff’s Department or the Buffalo P.D. What are they hiding and why? As the saying goes, the cover-up is often worse than the crime.
This could all have some political ramifications this year. Garcia is running for re-election with a huge war chest and no Democratic opponent. There is a major issue here that could affect an election. It is possible for someone to run as an independent candidate. Petitions for an independent candidate can be circulated starting on April 15th. Just 1,500 valid signatures are needed for this county office. That shouldn’t be hard considering that just the 3,000/4,000 signatories on Garcia’s Republican and Conservative parties petitions would be ineligible to sign, leaving more than 600,000 other registered voters in Erie County to be approached for an independent candidate’s petitions.
There could also be some fallout for the Scanlon for Mayor campaign because of the Granville connections to Scanlon. Reportedly Granville’s wife organized two Scanlon fundraisers in recent months.
In local news most stories are one or two day matters but the Granville story has legs. Lots of investigative reporting and an analysis is still to come.
Sheriff Garcia’s claim of transparency is taking a credible hit as this all plays out. It is still early but there could be consequences.
10 years of blogging
A personal note: the first post of Politics and Other Stuff was published on March 24, 2015. Boy time sure flies.
There have been three presidents, two governors, two mayors, and countless legislators on all levels during that time. The country is badly divided and there doesn’t seem to be much hope of that changing any time soon.
Over the past ten years I have posted 638 articles and counting. I wrote nearly all of the posts, but along the way my friends Paul Fisk and Steve Banko have added their thoughts in some very insightful articles. One article concerning the Diocese of Buffalo’s efforts to close many of its parishes, written by an anonymous friend, was the most popular post of the past year.
My review of the analytics of the posts throughout the years shows that my readers are more interested in articles about local government and politics than national stories, which of course are available by the thousands in various formats that are growing every day. Over the past ten years the largest one day viewing of a story on this blog concerned Steve Pigeon’s indictment.
Subscribers to the blog have come in various formats including direct email distribution by myself and my website host, WordPress, plus Twitter, Bluesky, Threads, and even LinkedIn. The numbers have grown steadily over the years.
I do not know who reads an individual post, but I know from the subscriber lists that the readers come from all political parties and independents; the print and electronic media; business and community organization leaders; and many concerned citizens who are interested in local politics and government. I appreciate each and every one of you. I particularly appreciate the readers who do not share my Democratic Party affiliation but continue to subscribe for the many articles that are totally fact-based.
I am very grateful for the suggestions and assistance provided by my long-time friend and Politics and Other Stuff editor Paul Fisk.
Going forward I intend to continue to concentrate on local stories although I will not hesitate to offer some thoughts on national issues or our beloved Buffalo sports teams from time to time. I welcome your comments and suggestions on story-line possibilities.
Thank you all for being a part of this journey.
Bluesky @kenkruly
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