BS Summary: This article contains 19 faulty reasoning types, including Optimism Bias, Biased Writer Voice, and Hasty Generalization, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 10.6% saturation with 132 hits. Analysis detected 944 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,242 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 29.9% and a BS Rank of 23% (21,842 of 28,112 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 77.70% of the article peer group.
Buffalo Mayor Sean Ryan.
Photo: Joshua Thermidor.
Editor’s note: This is the second of two stories based on an in-depth interview with Mayor Sean Ryan.
Yesterday’s story centered on his accomplishments and frustrations during his first seven months in office.
Buffalo Mayor Sean Ryan’s relationship with the city’s police union has been fraught, to say the least.
The union, whose contract with the city expired last July, endorsed Ryan’s opponents in both the Democratic primary and the general election.
Its leadership has only grown more sour on Ryan since he took office in January.
In a recent podcast interview , Buffalo Police Benevolent Association President John Davidson suggested the administration was attempting to “slowly defund police” through attrition — by failing to replace officers as they retire and putting off negotiations on a new contract.
At the beginning of last month — days before a rash of violence over the July 4 weekend — the union sent a text message to officers warning them that people with “extreme TDS” — Trump Derangement Syndrome — would likely disrupt a pro-Trump rally in Niagara Square over the weekend.
“This current city administration values the libtard ways more the [ sic ] celebrating this great nations [ sic ] 250th birthday,” the message said.
Ryan and his deputy mayors have rejected Davidson’s claims.
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The mayor told Investigative Post in a recent interview the administration would begin bargaining with the PBA this fall.
The current police contract was ratified by union membership in January 2024, when Byron Brown was mayor.
At that point officers had been working without a new agreement since July 2019 — four-and-a-half years.
An arbitrator in 2022 awarded officers retroactive pay raises , but that was not a new contract.
Ryan said the city’s new police commissioner, Erika Shields, continues to evaluate the department’s practices and policies.
Shields — the first police commissioner hired from outside the department since Gil Kerlikowske in 1994 — started work in May.
Her “initial reports,” Ryan said, indicate the police department shares some of the problems his administration has identified elsewhere in city government.
“Just like there’s a lack of policies and procedures inside City Hall, there’s also a lack of policies and procedures in the police department,” Ryan said.
An outsider’s perspective
Shields came to Buffalo after stints as head of police departments in Atlanta, Ga. and Louisville, Ky.
As “an outsider,” Ryan said, she brings a perspective informed by practices in those cities, and by her engagement with “national police training and protocol infrastructure.”
Her take on policing here, according to Ryan, is that the department suffers from “a lack of training programs, a lack of knowledge about what other departments are doing, and a lack of knowledge of some of the best practices, whether it be operationally or administratively, [implemented] by other police departments.”
While previous administrations have argued the police contract has hamstrung efforts to reform the department, Ryan said he believes there are also changes Shields can make outside the collective bargaining agreement.
A return to one-officer patrol cars.
That’s allowed contractually, but in practice officers for years have been doubling up.
“That’s because the city stopped buying patrol cars,” Ryan said.
The administration’s budget calls for the purchase of more patrol cars, which will allow officers to cover more territory.
Training programs for the department’s captains and chiefs, so they can bring home lessons from the command staffs in other cities.
Changes to the way detectives — the officers primarily charged with solving crimes — are deployed across shifts, so that crime scenes don’t have a chance to grow cold before an investigation begins.
“That’s all within our power,” he said.
He declined to discuss what concessions he would seek from the PBA during contract negotiations.
Instead, he noted that all seven union contracts in City Hall are up for negotiation right now.
“We view it as an opportunity to make the contracts more uniform,” he said.
“These are people working in the same work environment.
But one person gets off more days for bereavement when their grandmother dies than a coworker does, because they’re under a different collective bargaining agreement.”
Uniformity of benefits, ranging from attendance policies to health insurance, would make the city’s union contracts easier to administer and result in cost savings for taxpayers, Ryan said.
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Asked about recent “bouts of violence” that Davidson, the PBA president, has blamed on understaffing and a lack of a new contract, Ryan bristled.
“One bout, one day, 90 minutes,” he said, referring to a July 3 street party on East Delavan Avenue that resulted in 11 nonfatal shootings.
He credited city police for chasing and shutting down pop-up parties and drag racers all around the city that weekend.
“But at the very end, you know, we lost control of a multi-block area of Delavan, right?
It happened in dozens of cities across America the same weekend,” he said.
Plans for downtown and housing
Ryan campaigned last year on promises to bring new life to downtown Buffalo — which has yet to recover from COVID-era shutdowns — and to invest in expanding the city’s stock of healthy, affordable housing.
Regarding downtown, he said his administration has started with small measures to improve the streetscape.
Niagara Square has been re-striped to make it more friendly to pedestrians, he said.
There are more food trucks in the square on Thursdays than previously, and there are now Adirondack chairs and picnic tables.
The fountain is working.
Roosevelt Plaza — the triangle defined by Huron, Main and Genesee streets — has likewise been repainted “so it’s a little more conducive to recreational activities,” he said.
Pickleball courts have been installed in the ice rink at Fountain Plaza, and are frequently in use.
“A lot of the stuff we need to do downtown is to make things beautiful, you know, to make things nice,” he said.
“At the same time, we’re looking at our capital needs — paving the streets downtown, fixing the potholes, making sure the streetlights work.”
Investment in downtown housing or commercial space will follow investments in infrastructure and services, he said.
No business will locate downtown if a lack of snowplowing forces the business to shut down in the winter.
“Downtown really only works right if the basics work,” he said.
Ryan as a state senator was critical of most economic development subsidies for real estate development.
As mayor, the only development Ryan has expressed interest in subsidizing is affordable housing in the city’s neighborhoods.
He said his administration is “working now toward finalizing” a comprehensive plan to address the shortage of quality, affordable housing.
He pointed toward state funding for rehabilitation of vacant rental properties he championed as a state senator — up to $75,000 per unit — as a start.
“We think there’s 4,000 empty doubles, mostly owned by low-income seniors,” he said.
“We’ve got to get those back online.
That helps drive rents down.”
He also said his administration is “aggressively pursuing” funding for new-builds on vacant, city-owned lots in neighborhoods that have been decimated by disinvestment and demolitions.
He pointed to $12 million the state awarded the city this year to build 40 new houses.
“Buffalo can’t grow into the city we want to be unless we are building more housing,” he said
Speakers
4speakers63%attributed speech459writer words
Selected voice
100%flagged-word coverageJohn Davidson
41 attributed words5.2% of attributed speech45% writer coverage
Attribution is sentence-level. Pattern percentages are calculated only from words assigned to that voice.
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Analysis
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