The Buffalo Public Schools would be the gift that keeps on giving were it not for the fact that children are being hurt, and the schools clearly don't seem to care a bit about it.
SVU Detective Richard Hy unveiled allegations that students were being hurt and the police were often not told what was happening. He noted that reports were often filed, but as "information only," a term that he later likened to just letting the cops know your neighbor was doing some shady stuff that might not be criminal, but needed to be on record.
For sexual assault, that doesn't seem the right way to go about it.
But BPS attorney Robert Boreanaz took issue with Hy's efforts in a local media report.
That's right, he thinks Hy should have just written a memo or something.
Never mind that Hy has noted that in at least one instance, a principal has ignored a subpoena from the Erie County District Attorney's office for information regarding a sexual assault on a school campus. But sure, a memo would have made all the difference.
Boreanaz also argued that WGRZ's reporting disproves Hy's claims. After all, there have been over 17,700 calls to the police since 2021. I guess Boreanaz figures that's proof that the schools are cooperating with the police.
While WGRZ didn't push back at the claim during the interview, apparently, it did in its website's reporting:
Boreanaz gave this response on Hy's claims: "Just the overwhelming number of contacts by Buffalo school administrators to Buffalo Police Department contradicts these salacious claims."
Actually, the numbers of over 17,000 BPD response calls to schools since September of 2021 came from a 2 On Your Side report after we filed a Freedom of Information request with Buffalo Police.
The data in that FOIL request supports the idea from Detective Hy, that mis-categorizing the call to BPD dispatch is a way to disguise what's really happening at a school.
For example, according a press release from BPS, a teacher was placed on administrative leave after two students consumed gummies with THC on April 1.
According to the data obtained by WGRZ, that call was labeled as a "school other" incident when the school contacted police—even though there is a narcotics category at the dispatch level.
Whoops.
Now, Boreanaz is the attorney for the Buffalo Public Schools. It's his job to defend them, even if he thinks their every action is as vile as I do. However, if he's trying to do that, maybe he shouldn't be so bad at it.
Hy has always talked about there being "information only" reports. At least one case he talked about had a previous "information only" report. In fact, he asks that parents in Buffalo whose child may have been the victim of something that they trusted the school to report might want to see if there is a report at all, and if there is, if it's an "information only" report.
Nothing in that number disputes anything Hy has alleged.
In fact, it was such an egregious stretch that WGRZ had to point out that it doesn't. While the local media have largely been hostile to Hy, even they couldn't ignore this pile of male bovine feces.
Of course, if Boreanaz wants to disprove what Hy claimed, all he'd have to do is show some evidence of cooperation with the Buffalo Police Department on these cases.
Funny how that didn't get brought up, isn't it?
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