The BEAST: Buffalo's Best Fiend

Giambra Quits Ripping Off Taxpayers On Furniture

Funny how an enormous public outcry and a criminal investigation leading to charges by State Attorney General Elliot Spitzer can change things, including shady county bidding practices which usually send all furniture orders straight to Joel Giambra's chief fundraiser Jim Spanos and Buffalo Office Interiors. When Giambra got elected, the two knew they had a goldmine on their hands and schemed up a sweet scam which took over half a million dollars out of taxpayer stockings. At least that's as much as we know about. An actual bidding process was recently undertaken for current furnishing projects and, unsurprisingly, Buffalo Office Interiors is not the low bidder and contracts will be going to competent, reputable companies who've been in business for more than two years. Too bad the contracts are worth less than $200,000, nothing near the business B.O.I. had exclusive, overpriced rights to since its inception. Take one guess where the money's coming from? That's right, the dregs of the Tobacco Settlement money, better known as Giambra's Personal Slush Fund, tons of free cash now gone bye-bye. That's Erie County for you, happily flushing itself down the toilet after Buffalo.

As for Giambra, The poor guy can't get a break and has announced he won't seek a third term-seems he's not too popular for some reason. We can be sure that the Republicans have another snake oil selling leach lined up right behind him, and are hoping to dupe your asses into voting for him. The News made it a 24-point double headline complete with an overhead quote ("I am not running for reelection as county executive") and an ass-kissing subheading ("He Wants No Politics To Hamper His Agenda"). In announcing he won't run for re-election Giambra whined about being heckled on the street and at the Bills game. Good.

Poor Joel

Why does Joel Giambra get so much sympathy from the Buffalo News? Shit, you know why, this is Buffalo! That shit is no news flash to Erie County voters who would relish nothing better than electing a poo-eating chimp from the zoo over Giambra any day of the week. This little gem came the day after the budget "passed" which raises our already outrageous sales tax to 9.25%. What can we say about this asshole and his misdeeds which cheat taxpayers pretty much every hour of every day? Not much. Nancy Naples released an audit last week detailing all the fraudulent purchasing practices in county government, nothing new there about how county government spends too much of our money buying shit from their friends which we don't really need, especially when the county's so broke they have to raise the sales tax. and, just for the record we yelled "How's the cancer, jackass?"

Budget Mess

When our wonderful new budget got passed, it was the result of a secret meeting between Giambra and a few county legislators coming to an agreement only a few minutes before the deadline that would have made the infamous red budget law. That's a violation of the state's open meeting laws, which obviously doesn't mean shit. So they emerge from the room, tell everyone how to vote, and it passes without legislators even reading the contents contained in hundreds of pages about what they're voting for. All they knew for sure was their patronage jobs were being saved, taxes and fees were going up, and their precious $150,000 in handout money would still be available.

Now there's at least two lawsuits challenging the way the budget was passed, one by a taxpayer, the other by Nancy Naples, both contending the process was flawed and illegal. According to Naples, who seems to enjoy the pain-in the-ass role, budget amendments must be passed individually and not in package form, as they were in this case. The budget's not really passed; votes still need to be taken in December and January and they could be different now that legislators have had the time to actually read and understand what they passed. If a court upholds these challenges, it's quite possible the dreaded red budget will go into effect on January 1st. If that happens, it should backfire on legislators, but probably won't, since you're probably not paying attention.

Crooked Cops

It happens every day, probably as you're reading this: somewhere out there in Buffalo-Land your friendly, neighborhood drug dealer is getting shaken down by the cops. They scare the shit out of him (or her), rough 'em up a bit, take the cash and the stash, then disappear, leaving the bewildered dealer thoroughly freaked out and in danger of a punitive capping. Afterwards, they split up the money and sell the drugs themselves or through other drug dealers. It's called "lunch money." At least that's the case with formerly respected Buffalo Narcotics Detectives Rene Gil, Paul Skinner and Sylvestre Acosta. Gil is ratting in open court on his former crooked colleagues about various aforementioned activities, as well as telling tales of planting evidence and habitually violating the civil rights of suspected drug dealers in order to make arrests. Skinner's brother Gerald and four others are already in prison for this stuff, and recently suspended Detective Andres Ortiz was also implicated by Gil in over four hours of testimony. Sounds like somebody's Narcotics Department is seriously screwed up, just like every other institution around here invested with the public trust. On the bright side, the BEAST can assure our faithful readers that your illegal drugs will be as readily available as ever, depending on drying or cooking time and individual dealer quirks.

Too Good To Be True

Frank Cannata's resume reads like a perfect Boy Scout record: elementary school teacher, church organist and choir director, ex-school board president, and current principal of the Charlotte Sidway Elementary School. Beloved by students, parents, administrators and church types, Cannata's drug possession arrest this week sent waves of shock throughout the Grand Island community. Seems the good Mr. Cannata has a serious jones for crystal meth and Ecstasy and the DEA busted him redhanded with a meth pipe in his mouth. At least he was high as a kite when they lead him off in handcuffs and the pain of horribly ruining his life was muted at the time. The pastor of his church urged the community not to rush to judgment. Right. Police became suspicious when Cannata raided the budget to pay the Chemical Brothers to remix the school's anthem. Cannata insists the bust was part of an elaborate conspiracy to harsh his groove.

Hockey Season!

Not gonna happen.

How Low Can You Go?
There's lots of different crimes: despicable ones, crafty ones, and then a long list of subcategories to stupid. Snatching the donation basket in church is of the latter variety, a desperate move which turned out comical at St. Gerard's Catholic Church on Bailey and East Delavan. Willie Bell, 26, waited until all the collections were in, then grabbed the basket and bolted, prompting more than a dozen screaming parishioners to give chase. They flagged down nearby police officers, who must have thought the bunch were chasing Jesus himself. Bell didn't get far before being nabbed, and had to suffer a chorus of church folk preaching down to him about the eighth commandment as he languished in the backseat of a patrol car. Stealing from church-who does this guy think he is, a preacher?

Coming Home

Local Indians are itching for a new battle with the state for inviting out-of-state tribes into New York to open casinos. An Oneida tribe from Wisconsin contends the purchases of their land in Oneida and Madison Counties back in the 1700s was illegal and therefore they have the right to open neon cash cows there. Naturally our own Indians, especially the Seneca, have cried foul; after all, they do technically still live here. Of course it's the Seneca's hard line stance against submitting to a state sales tax which has caused the Pataki administration to scare up some friendly Indians who'll kick back to the state in the proper manner. There are already approved deals with the Cayuga tribe of Oklahoma to build a casino in Monticello, an hour north of New York City. Sort of ironic: whitey kicked them out of here back before "laws" ruled the land, and now he invites them back. For the next few years, the only people making money on this will be lawyers, but at least we won't have any new evil casinos popping up!

County Moves to Protect Moose, Squirrel

It would seem not everyone in the Erie County government is a humorless stooge. An alert reader with too much time on his hands was searching the County website and stumbled upon some farcical "most wanted" pages on the Sheriff's section. The spurious "suspects" include Hannibal Lector, Boris Badenov, and, of course, Osama Bin Laden.

Now, part of us wants to use this discovery as an opportunity to once again flog the County for squandering money and time in every way conceivable, even making up fake web pages. But frankly, this is funny, and we can't pretend that we wouldn't have been right there laughing our asses off with the government tech-geeks who put these pages up, if we worked there.

You can check it out yourself, for however long it takes for someone important to read this, at http://www.erie.gov/sheriff/most_wanted/hannibal.asp, /boris.asp, and /bin_laden.asp. At least somebody's having fun over there.

Soft Drugs, Hard Time

Any move to reduce the Draconian mandatory penalties implemented under New York's ill-conceived and obsolete Rockefeller drug laws is a good thing. The laws require mandatory minimum sentences for relatively minor offenses, starting at 15-to-life.

So we're happy to hear that after 10 years of dickering, the laws have been altered. But the results aren't that great. The mandatory minimums are still there, but they have been reduced-the new minimum sentence for owning or selling a few bags of grass is 8-to-20. Years. In other words, a rapist still does less time in New York State than a nonviolent drug-related first offender.

So, the laws are still insane, akin to locking people up for decades for running whiskey during prohibition. Add to that the fact that over 90% of drug offenders in prison are black or Hispanic, while whites account for the majority of drug consumption. Hmmm, guess honkies are just better at not getting caught.

The changes are better than nothing, especially when politicians are scared stiff to appear "soft on crime," and the prison industry wants more clients. But jailing someone for years on a pot bust still doesn't make sense. It's expensive, and self-defeating-any exposure to our hellish prison system can make a formerly peaceful man into a psychopath. The conservative RAND Corporation found in '97 that treatment is 15 times as effective as jail time in reducing serious crime. It's also a hell of a lot cheaper.

Drug addiction is a medical problem, and if outrageous punishments haven't solved it after thirty years, it's time to rethink the strategy entirely, not just roll it back.