BUFFALO, N.Y. — The breakup of the Buffalo Common Council's Police Advisory Board on March 8 is fueling new discussion about accountability programs. The Common Council dissolved the board citing internal problems like in-fighting and mass resignation, but the PAB's two former co-chairs say that's not the full story.
Both Frederick Gazzoli and Dominique Calhoun were Police Advisory Board members when it was dissolved last week.
"We were completely taken off guard," said Calhoun.
Neither co-chair feels the advisory board's elimination was justified and they stand by the work they've done to improve community-police relations in Buffalo. In fact, Gazzoli believes the dissolution went against the very goal of their former organization, which was to offer suggestions to improve Buffalo policing from outside Buffalo City Hall.
"I kind of believe it was a foregone conclusion," Gazzoli said.
He added, "Whatever board they want to create I don't think the community would be served properly by having people handpicked by 11 or 12 politicians."
"I feel like we were getting good work done based on the agenda that we had," Calhoun said.
That agenda recently included codifying use of force policies for the Buffalo Police Department and helped bring police body cameras to Buffalo closer to its creation in 2018. The Common Council does plan to remake the Police Advisory Board, but for the members who were kicked out, Gazzoli thinks there was another motivating factor.
“It's a political move to try and get control of the Police Advisory Board pure and simple,” Gazzoli said.
2 On Your Side asked Council Member David Rivera about that claim, "To hear former co-chairs of this board say this is a political stunt, what is your response to that?"
Council Member Rivera responded, "Nothing could be further from the truth. We worked really well with the previous boards and we give them credit for a lot of the good work they've done. I don't want to get into name callings, that's not what this is about. It's about working together, developing consensus, we had a board that didn't work well together."
Rivera was the Common Council member who presented the resolution last week to have the board dissolved. He explained that when the council went to review the board's procedures they found no by-laws existed. That's why a separate resolution was put forward in February to create rules for approving new board members, but that review process received pushback.
On Monday, Calhoun shared with 2 On Your Side a document that she said were the by-laws they had presented to the council. While Calhoun and Gazzoli said there were disagreements on the board, both of them challenged that alone as justification for getting rid of the board. CORRECTION: A sentence mentioning the lack of a date on the by-laws has been removed. The document was digitally dated and signed 2/21/22.
"I would say for any organization for anyone that has sat on a board there is always going to be disagreements about topics and... so I think this is part of a bigger conversation about why we need a board that is independent of the Common Council,” Calhoun said.
Calhoun now hopes to accomplish that goal of independence through a ballot initiative in November. They will need 8,000 signatures from Buffalo neighbors for a chance to establish what she and Gazzoli think the Police Advisory Board should be.
“It will be just a question to the community, do they want an independent oversight board free of the Common Council and the mayor. Similar to what Rochester has that has shown to be effective,” she added.
The Rochester Police Accountability Board was established through a ballot initiative that passed in 2019 but according to their website, they are only starting to accept complaints. Council Member Rivera has said Buffalo will be looking to other cities for examples when developing their new program.
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