Tonight I picked up from the scanner that Air 1 was tracking a stolen jeep in my neighborhood and were helping BPD to hone in on it.
A few minutes later I heard "two in custody", and I was off to film.
The video above is just of my approach to the scene, but you can watch my entire ground coverage via my X feed of it (and, it's becoming increasingly clear - BuffScan can't leave X)
Radio traffic suggests two were arrested, but, also, that two police officers were injured. The ground footage shows two patients being loaded into the back of ambulances and taken from the scene. I will update this post with MSM profit media links when/if they are made available.
Linkage
 By BuffScan for BuffScan.
buffalopolice kiaboyz takedown
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Man - the things that can happen while just sitting in traffic.
On February 8 of this past week I had just pulled up in line to the light-stopped traffic headed into the Humboldt Parkway intersection. This is the probably the busiest intersection on Main Street on any given weekday at that time, which was about 8 AM.
Suddenly, there is the sound of a siren behind me, and just like that, a speeding Ram pickup truck followed by two Buffalo Police cars, race on by.
The truck recklessly enters into the intersection miraculously without causing an accident, as do the BPD units, determined to catch their suspect.
At the time, BPD had good reason to believe that the runner was possibly the shooter in a shooting incident at the Marine Drive Apartment complex, located downtown, literally off the city marina.
As it would later turn out, the shooter was actually a retired Buffalo Police officer named Antonio Roman (either being, if not simply unfortunately sharing, the same name as another controversial Buffalo Police officer in the mid-2000s), who apparently managed to squeeze off a round or two, or three, at purported car creeper thieves at or near the apartment complex.
Update 2/24/24: Antonio Roman has been arraigned on first degree assault charges.
The person threatening everyone's lives that morning by running from police was reportedly an alleged accomplice of the shot thief.
The pickup truck wound through Buffalo, winding up abandoned in a neighborhood near the Buffalo/Amherst line. Further radio traffic of the incident tells that the sole suspect from that vehicle was then cornered and apprehended successfully with the help of Amherst Police Department's K9 unit.
So all in all, a great outcome.
The story elements probably demand a lot more attention than were given in my opinion. But the important thing is a thief may have learned a lesson, and the Buffalo and Amherst Police departments, got the other one.
Linkage
 By BuffScan for BuffScan.
buffalopolice shooting takedown
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Finally, someone is actually sitting in jail for stealing a KIA.
A one Jashawn Fields is currently listed as being in jail since July 10 after Buffalo Police borrowed the Erie County Sheriff helicopter and decided to chase down some "KIA Boyz" from the air.
Fields was apprehended last Sunday when the chopper followed a stolen vehicle, a vehicle which contained him and at least one if not several others, to Esser Avenue in Buffalo.
I am assuming Fields knew he was being followed from the air and in his pip-squeak little brain, thought he could outrun helicopters. But if not I'd be curious how he mentally processed it all when they slapped the cuffs on him - he must have been bewildered and blamed "magic" or something.
I know personally from listening to the scanner at the time that he and his cohorts bailed and at least one of them entered a neighborhood house (two actually). Despite social media remarks I've encountered suggesting otherwise, he does not appear to be being charged for that entry, insofar as I can tell by online court records.
Incredibly, Fields appears to be the same person allegedly involved in a similar theft in the Town of Tonawanda a few weeks earlier which involved the stolen car he was allegedly driving crashing into a tree. As per New York's current bail laws, he was let go with a promise to report back to court on July 17.
So, let that sink in.
Curious justice-seekers can follow these cases as CR-04194-23 and CR-03732-23 via the New York Unified State Unified Court System Webcriminal portal.
 By BuffScan for BuffScan.
buffalopolice kiaboyz takedown
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I and by extension BuffScan occupy a unique place in the spectrum of police/public relationship quality. On one hand, I can be seen as an agitator-nuisance, what with all this "open broadcasting" and glorification of public safety drama bullshit (objective characterization I mean, to me, it's not "BS"). In other words a troublemaker sure to bite his way to someone's retaliation or to get himself killed somehow. The obit on myself were it to involve my activities, would not surprise me in the least.
But on the other hand I am an open non-sexual "police groupie" type. I love law enforcement, its structure, its institutions, its entire point in a viable working healthy society. Progressive and ardent BLM supporters (the foaming aggressive ones at least) would take me as a bootlicker.
Now of course I would not go that far, but if anyone erroneously felt that way, I get it. I try to post only positive things here whenever it's a police thing that I have to talk about, which I won't deny.
For example, there was a Ring-style camera video posted online about two weeks ago -- somewhere -- showing a local area police officer in full uniform, gun and all, who stows behind a building for a quick pee.
The video camera captured it all in at least 1080...P.
I have that video saved, but I sure as hell ain't posting it. And I go out of my way to mention this to demonstrate some kind of institutional compassion. For one, the situation deserves it. The officer was probably on a detail (I suspect but don't know related to the art festival. Def something like that in any case), and just had to go, period. I am sure that it was a breach of desperation and seeing the video posted with its at-last-count 2.2K views, had to be the most embarrassing thing ever for the officer.
And second, related to that empathy, I've done the same thing under far less noble circumstances. Thanks to a night of heavy drinking and a decision to "walk it" home, there is now a building on Delaware Avenue with the residue of my diabetically over-sweetened urine, sprinkled in place by me making the bladder gladder when I had nine blocks to the bathroom. I know that my desperate situation and ultimate handling of it exists in some commercial building's security video archive, and I would hate to see that posted.
It's noteworthy too that the local MSM media feels the same way, evidently. Though it has been a few weeks now, it has not, despite its higher than average view count for the forum it exists in, to the best of my knowledge at least, been seized upon and raised to the level of ever-profitable "gotcha" journalism, which it easily could be.
I felt the need to explain why the local website of pure public safety openness and the self-admitted embracer of drama and gasolining-on, might not immediately bee-line to post this video, particularly when nobody else has. In this website's early days let this be a notable example and acknowledgment that even I have my limits when it comes to respecting individuals in this sort of very specific situation.
 By BuffScan for BuffScan.
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So this happened this afternoon. As best as I can deduce from the BuffScan feed playback, officers were searching the neighborhood for a gun suspect which brought at least one officer to the very porch of BuffScan Operational Headquarters.
The actual incident that prompted the search appears to have taken place several blocks south and it is unclear if the search ultimately resulted in a takedown - which would have been awesome.
But, the radio chatter suggested that police were associating the suspect with a 4 door blue Acura. After I made this video footage a Ring Neighborhood app post, one commentator said they spotted one leaving the neighborhood fast.
De-tects, you might find this one interesting if you're still looking for the suspect.
 By BuffScan for BuffScan.
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Ever since it's been possible for people to circulate Ring Doorbell-style video clips of low level criminal actors stealing packages and committing vandalism and the like, I've wondered, do police roam those posts and take notes? Is there any demonstrative curiosity prompting them to scroll through those postings?
The answer is probably yes. Though I would guess it is just to tie some happestance of some bottom-feeder criminal to a larger crime actually worth spending resources on.
But do they interact with the public while they are doing this? Are they assuring in an official social media comment-injected post, "Hey, we're here, we're watching, we're interested, and thank you for posting this!"
That's where the answer is probably not. Or at least that I've ever seen insfofar as Buffalo city postings.
Well, here's an example out of Wilkes-Barre Pennsylvania where I routinely monitor the Ring Neighbors app of my old neighborhood there, because I'm just nuts. It shows off exactly what I'm talking about. People post their vids of porch pirates and what-not, and a detective caters to the public imagination that police care and are in the obvious place checking evidence where evidence is most contributed.
I think it would be great to develop the work flow and assign a social media ambassador to "patrol" these types of feeds and forums with the aim of creating a logically expected presence.
 By BuffScan for BuffScan.
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Couple of interesting facets to this incident that occurred near the intersection of Grant and West Ferry. But the really big one will be spotted only by the sharpest eyes. Watch the video closely.
I became cognizant of this incident, which was just a block or two outside my BuffScan residential response zone, by sirens running past my apartment. One siren had the gun of an engine that told me it was a) the police, and b) it was something serious enough to merit charging to the scene.
And believe it or not, despite the excitement of the obvious crisis -- somewhere nearby -- my first instinct was not to crawl out of bed to investigate. I could tell it wasn't "just out front" and as fate had it, I was suffering from the lingering effect of what felt like the flu. I was too comfy under the covers and while I knew I was missing something "just close enough" maybe, I wasn't getting up to see what.
That was for the first siren, and I believe for the second. But after the third, and then, when I managed myself up to look out the window, I saw two other police cars racing sans lights and sirens in the same direction, I knew, well shoot, physical health be damned, I had to figure out what was up.
Whatever the heck it was, I couldn't legitimately be "Mister BuffScan" if the world was coming down a few blocks away and I didn't at least try to go and document it. So, mumbling and grumbling I found my sneakers and got going.
I also fired up the YouTube BuffScan feed to get some insight as to what I might be foolishly driving myself into, but only in time to hear this one line: "Cars slow it down, slow it down for Grant and West Ferry."
Well at least I knew where this thing was. Just a few blocks up. In the back of my mind I had hoped it would be farther away so that I could just wave it off as "too far" and get myself back into bed. But with that veracious a response, and so close, well, as I've said already, I couldn't not go check it out.
So off I go in my car. As I turn out of the driveway I immediately spot the conflagration of police and fire trucks directly ahead of me. It wouldn't be a far drive, and while I was at it, I could pick up some toilet paper after I was done recording whatever was going on. I suspected the flu after all, people, and I needed a resupply.
I did park my car in a near empty parking lot across the street, hopped out, and in no time was that weirdo filming the scene; some footage of which you see above.
The scene I had injected myself into was a block-length's line of police vehicles, some with overheads on, some not. Most dramatically as you see in the video, one of them had been driven on to the sidewalk as if having just about driven into the building ahead of it.
A group of firemen and police were "working on" someone seemingly at the hood of the BPD cruiser and immediately I feared the worst. Had a BPD vehicle physically mowed someone down? Was there a shootout that meant an officer had to keep his attention on a gun instead of the steering wheel? The layout wasn't good so I mentally prepared myself for whatever gruesome thing those people were hovering over.
In short order I heard the bellowing cries of a man and knew right away someone hadn't been killed, irregardless of whatever happened. Thank god. The cries came from what I took to be a brown-skinned man lying on the ground, still in a bit of a physical tussel. He was shouting arbitrary sentences at the people trying desperately to tend to him.
I settled on what most of the others standing around me did, which was that someone enduring a mental health crisis, or drug consumption, was having a breakdown and acting out. He was probably confronted by the police somehow and then challenged them which of course did not end well. At this writing, the actual story is still unknown, but when speculating, it's fair to start with the simple theories first.
But in looking at the video, all of that is really beside the point. A block's worth of police, an untold gaggle of police officers remunerating everything among themselves; citizens standing around aghast, a screaming perp-victim on the ground who was bounded quickly and loaded into an ambulance (and I might add much to his apparent objection), and a weirdo - heh - filming it all.
And yet, what you see in the video is this: Absolutely nothing.
And by that I mean, save for my filming, save for the inside knowledge of the public safety system and a few direct witnesses, to the wider knowledge of the world at large, nothing happened. This was a non-event that evaporated of police cars and witnesses relatively quickly afterwards.
Don't take that the wrong way. Yes, the information exists. Police have it, AMR has it, the fire department has it, and even the witnesses with their individual memories and renditions, have it. And certainly with great effort, the story of what happened could be "mined away" from the people who hold it. Maybe it would flow freely from them on the simplest of query. Maybe it would take a fight, if for some reason it mattered to have one. Maybe a resource-strapped for-profit media house would actually step up and blotter it as perhaps a lit up city block of public safety vehicles should be logically incentivizing enough to do.
But then again, maybe not.
Information is caprciously over-controlled. Maybe there is fear of wrong-doing and mismanagement; or maybe, as the saying goes: Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Who knows. But if public safety feels something is too routine, or the for-profit media is too lean to cover it, whatever dark thing we think can happen in a world where human curiosity is squelched, might-could.
 By BuffScan for BuffScan.
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