BUFFALO, N.Y. — Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia and Mayor Byron Brown testified last fall that the city’s contract with its police union and the power it bestows on an arbitrator make it too difficult to discipline cops accused of misconduct.
“I think any chief executive that’s running the department would like to have the managerial ability to run a department, but that’s not the contractual language that was laid out well before my time,” Gramaglia testified during a recent deposition in a police brutality lawsuit. “The arbitrator’s decision, the independent arbitrator’s decision and finding, is final in a disciplinary matter.”
Gramaglia and the mayor are wrong, however, according to police reform advocates and lawyers who point to court decisions and the city’s charter, which puts the commissioner in charge of discipline. Even a lawyer for the city has said that the commissioner, not an arbitrator, should have final disciplinary authority.
