Erica O'Donnell for City Council sponsors the event. All donations benefit Batavia City Schools Community Closet. All sizes appreciated. Donations only of new underwear and socks.
The GOW Opioid Task Force presents an Overdose Awareness Day Event at Austin Park.
Press release:
Held July 31 at the Ontelaunee Rod & Gun club in New Tripoli PA. Eugene Jankowski Jr finished 8th place in the optics division.
The top shooters in the region completed 8 tricky stages of fire using 3 firearms (pistol, shotgun and semiauto rifle) to score on paper, steel, clay birds and spinning targets.
Jankowski said “ Time and accuracy carries the day in 3 Gun, so I chose efficient plans to complete the various stages. That helped me to get through the stage pretty quickly. ” Jankowski is sponsored locally by Offhause Farms and POTF shooting range.
Press release:
Applications are now being accepted with anticipated move-in capability for December 1 for Liberty Square Apartments on East Main Street, Batavia.
Liberty Square is a 28-unit program located at 554 East Main Street, Batavia, NY, that will serve homeless or unstably housed Veterans with disabilities in a Permanent Supportive Housing environment. The 28 units are integrated into a 55-unit, general occupancy community, being developed in partnership with Home Leasing, LLC. The project consists of a 4-story, fully accessible building with a secure entry system, a welcoming community room, discrete staff offices, to include specific space for Eagle Star Housing staff, in-door bike storage, laundry facilities, fitness center, available laptops, raised garden beds, a fenced playground and on-site parking.
Liberty Square Apartments includes a fully equipped kitchen with a range, refrigerator, microwave, wall-mounted TV, local TV channels with cable available, and in-unit storage. Heat, air conditioning, hot water, trash removal, and electricity are all included in the rent, and on-site laundry facilities are available at no cost to the tenant. Off-street parking is available. Tenants have access to a community room, bike storage, exercise equipment, and a computer lab. There are eight studio apartments and 20 one-bedroom apartments available. Tenant pays 30% of their income as rent and a stipend covers the rest. No security deposit is required.
To qualify, you must have served in the military, be in a housing crisis and have an identified disability or case management need.
You must meet eligibility and income requirements associated with the Low-Income Housing Tax credit program. Staff will aid in completing a housing application to make this determination.
Eagle Star Housing, Inc. manages supportive Housing Units under the Empire State Supportive Housing Initiative.
Applications for the Supportive Housing apartments are available at the Eagle Star Housing website:
www.eaglestarhousing.com/supportive-apartment-programs/.
Questions can be directed to Erin Corcoran, Vice President of Clinical Operations at ecorcoran@eaglestarhousing.com or 585-360-7931.
Supportive Services Provided:
- Access to a Housing Specialist 40 hours per week Monday - Friday to provide support with linkages in the community, networking with providers, and maintaining independence through a Housing Support Plan.
- Access to transportation to appointments, employment, or local establishments as needed Monday through Friday and certain hours Saturday and Sunday.
- Access to planned activities and community events.
- Fully furnished apartment including couch, armchair, side table, TV, lamp, kitchen table and chairs, bedframe, mattress, bedside table, and dresser.
- Startup kit, which includes bedroom and bath linens, dishes, silverware, pots, and pans, vacuum and cleaning supplies, and personal hygiene items.
Press release:
Tompkins Insurance Agencies is pleased to announce that it has received a 2021 Rochester Business Journal Reader Rankings Award for “Best Insurance Company.”
The Reader Rankings Awards are a reader-driven contest to identify favorite companies and organizations in dozens of categories through a two-step nomination and voting process. This year, there were 16,000 total nominations and about 44,000 total votes throughout the contest.
Tompkins Insurance has also been consistently ranked among the Top 3 commercial insurance brokers in the Rochester area by the Rochester Business Journal, as well as ranked among the Top 100 commercial insurance agencies and the Top 50 personal insurance agencies in the country (according to Business Insurance and Insurance Journal magazines’ national rankings).
Press release:
The Genesee County Health Department is seeking information about the location of a dog and its owners following a dog bite incident on Saturday, July 17th, around noon at Home Depot in Batavia (4181 Veterans Memorial Drive).
The dog is described as a small black dog on a leash. The dog’s owners were described as a male and female, approximately 40 years of age or younger. The employee was near register #2 and asked the owners if they could pet their dog. The owners said yes and the dog then bit the employee on their right hand. The owners were aware that the dog had bit the employee and asked if they were ok. The employee indicated that they were ok so the owners and dog proceeded to leave the store.
It is important to locate the dog to determine whether or not it is current on its rabies shot. If the health status is not identified, post-exposure rabies shots will be offered to the victim.
If you have information about the location of the dog and its owner, please contact the Genesee County Health Department at 585-344-2580 ext. 5555.
It is important to remember that dogs may act protective in unknown places and situations, so ‘love your own…leave the rest alone’. All wild and unknown animals (even dogs and cats) should be avoided whenever possible since the possibility of exposure to rabies can occur anywhere and anytime.
A continuance was granted to Michael Tomaszewski on Wednesday morning for his sentencing on his fraud conviction.
The former funeral director entered a guilty plea in April to counts of grand larceny, scheme to defraud, offering a false instrument for filing, and untimely burial.
The plea offer included no promise of a sentence of lesser than the statutory time in prison of two and a third to seven years and he was scheduled for sentencing yesterday.
The court did not release information on the reason for the delay.
The new date is Oct. 6 at 1:30 p.m.
For previous coverage of Tomaszewski, click here.
The Batavia Concert Band and its patrons finished the 2020 season with its seventh straight perfect Wednesday evening in Cential Park and presented some of its supporters and musicians with awards.
The Batavia Rotary Club was honored with the band's annual Friend of the Band Award and Dr. Marlin Salmon accepted the award on behalf of the club.
The band also present a donation to Rev. Ivan R. Trujill, Resurrection Parrish, for allowing the band to practice at the church for the past seven weeks.
Scholarships were presented to
Photos by Liz Bailey.
To help draw attention to the critical need for eligible blood donors to come forward and help replenish the supply of blood, UMMC hosted a blood drive on Friday.
UMMC’s Lead Blood Bank Technologist, Jacyln DeGolia was among the donors.
"There's a small percentage of people who are eligible to donate and it's important for our country to keep our blood supply up and for anyone who is eligible to donate to do so on a regular basis," she said. "(It's important) especially for people like myself who are O-negative, which is the universal donor. I know how important that can be in an emergency situation where we may not have a chance to know a patient's blood type when they need a product, so that's why I personally donate.
A porch fire was reported at 122 Bank St., Batavia.
City Fire responded.
Fire is out, commencing overhaul.
Press release:
Starting on August 10, 2021, sections of the Center Street lot will be closed for paving operations. This work will be performed during the business day between 7 a.m. and 3 p.m. and is weather-dependent.
If you have any questions, you can contact the Bureau of Maintenance at 585-345-6400 option 1.
We appreciate your cooperation in advance.
A Batavia man facing multiple criminal charges, many of them stemming from alleged acts after prior arrests, didn't show up in County Court this morning.
According to defense attorney Nathan Pace, his client, Devon Wright, called him this morning and said that last night he had dislocated his knee, couldn't walk, and was in much pain and so wouldn't be able to make it to court.
The court clerk then revealed that Wright had also called the court and said he wanted a new attorney so he wouldn't be showing up for court.
At the request of District Attorney Lawrence Friedman, Judge Charles Zambito issued a warrant for Wright's arrest.
Zambito then proceeded with setting a trial date for Wright on two of the charges against him, attempted criminal possession of a weapon 2nd and attempted criminal possession of a weapon 3rd, along with his co-defendant in that case, Jacob Sponaugle.
Sponaugle is charged with attempted murder, assault, 1st; criminal use of a firearm; aggravated criminal possession of a weapon, 2nd; criminal possession of a weapon, 2nd; and criminal sale of a firearm, 3rd.
Both men were allegedly involved in an attempted gun sale gone wrong on July 22, 2020. A third person at the scene was shot and wounded in the lobby of the Days Inn in Batavia.
According to Friedman, Wright was the person attempting to buy the guns.
Details of what transpired at the Days Inn that night have not been released.
Soon after Zambiot set a trial date of Sept. 13, Wright walked into court (showing no signs of any injury).
Dressed in sweats and a t-shirt, he stepped to the defense table and informed the judge that he would like a new attorney. His complaint about his attorney was that he didn't think he and his attorney were on the same page, that Pace had called up Wright and informed him they needed to meet, and that Wright needed to go to Pace's office. Because Wright's driving privileges are suspended, he said he couldn't drive himself there.
"I can't make somebody drive me there," Wright said.
Zambito denied Wright's request for a new attorney finding his reason this close to trial without merit. He instructed Pace to work with his client to find a suitable time and place to meet, Pace told Zambito that he needed a quiet and private place to meet with his client, which is why he asked to meet at his office. Zambito said that if Pace's office is difficult for Wright to get to, the courthouse has conference rooms they can use to meet. He told Wright it is unreasonable for him to expect Pace to come to his house to meet.
Among the other charges still pending against Wright are:
Wright remains free on bail set in the Highland Park case and Zambito has expressed frustration at his inability to set new bail in subsequent cases due to New York's bail reform law.
Previously:
When reporters for a national publication focused on justice system reform looked for a county to illuminate the changes in jail population due to pandemic-related fluctuations, they settled on Genesee County and an inmate they thought illustrated the shifting priorities of the system.
The selection of Matthew Reed to help tell the story of a person who might have been mistreated by the system drew attention locally.
Reed's name is familiar to anybody who regularly pays attention to published arrest reports.
In this case, Reed was highlighted for his conviction on a petty larceny charge -- he stole, as the story noted, $63 in bedsheets from Target. His example was perhaps colorful because his sentencing was delayed for months because of the closure of the Town of Batavia court during the pandemic. When he was eventually sentenced by Town Justice Andrew Young in May he was ordered to serve six months in the Genesee County Jail. (With good behavior, he should be out in about a month).
Reed doesn’t understand the point of sending him to jail now, only further destabilizing his life. “They could have at least offered me drug court or some type of rehab or something,” he said in an interview from the Genesee County Jail last week.
While it's true Reed wasn't offered an opportunity for drug court or rehab, in Genesee County -- at least -- it's up to a defendant's attorney to ask the court to consider those options prior to sentencing, something Reed said his attorney didn't do even though he asked him to make that request. Reed's attorney, Michael Guarino, told The Batavian after a recent court appearance on another matter that he did make that request, and it was rejected by the DA's office.
The Marshall Project story leaves the impression that stealing some bedsheets was Reed's only crime and he was given a harsh sentence after being left in limbo for months while awaiting his sentence.
That isn't the whole story, however. In October 2020, Reed also admitted to a criminal charge of bail jumping in the third degree. He was sentenced in May on both charges.
While Young didn't give a reason for his sentence of six months for Reed, according to a recording of the proceeding obtained by The Batavian from the Town of Batavia Court, Young was made aware of the 38-year-old Batavia resident's prior criminal history, including multiple failures to appear and parole and probation revocations.
These issues came up because Reed was requesting a delay in his sentencing over concern he wanted to collect one more disability check before going to jail so he could have some money on his books. This fact isn't mentioned in the Marshall Project story.
Assistant District Attorney Kaitlynn Schmit objected to the delay out of concern Reed wouldn't make a future court appearance. She also brought to Young's attention a letter Reed had sent the court earlier asking that his case be expedited. He was distressed by the COVID-related delay in his sentencing.
While Reed's criminal history as an adult is lengthy, the prior arrests are all for relatively minor offenses, such as trespassing, harassment, and disorderly conduct. His sentences over the years have included time in jail, community service, fines and probation. His longest sentence appears to have been 365 days in 2008 on a scheme to defraud conviction.
Reached via email, Schwartzapfel said none of that -- not even the bail jumping charge included in his May sentence -- was relevant to the story she was writing.
The story's thesis is captured in the article's 28th paragraph:
The pandemic underscored what reform advocates have been saying for years: Cramped and filthy jails are the wrong place for most people who have been arrested.
In an email to The Batavian, Schwartzapfel wrote:
To answer your questions, yes of course I did a criminal history search on Reed, and I knew he had also been charged with bail jumping, which is a very scary-sounding way of saying, he missed a court date. I could have included that, as well as the list of other priors (almost all years-old petit larcenies), but it wasn't really relevant to the point, which was, he stayed out of jail during the pandemic when he would have otherwise gone to jail; and now, months later, he's serving a delayed sentence.
While ADA Schmit is on leave, The Batavian reached out to District Attorney Lawrence Friedman for background on the case and the policies of his office on cases like this. Asked about Schwartzapfel's characterization of her story, he said:
“Missed a court date” is a very nice sounding way of saying “bail jumping”.
Regardless of how old his priors are, they still factor in the determination as to what is an appropriate sentence.
Leaving out any other charge that was pending against him certainly misleads the reader about the nature of Reed's sentence, especially bail jumping.
I can’t understand the logic behind the contention that, because he hadn't been sentenced for so long, he shouldn't have been sent to jail.
AUTHOR DISCLOSURE: I first met Matthew Reed years ago while outside of our former downtown office and he asked me for money. I gave him money then and two or three times in the next couple of weeks when he asked for money, usually with some story about his disability check being late or the funds not being available to pay his rent or needing money for food. After three or four times of this, I told him I couldn't give him any more money. Eventually, he stopped asking for money, including in the past year when I would see him almost daily in the area Ellicott Street and Liberty Street.
In the story, Schwartzapfel writes:
In the Genesee County Jail in New York, where Reed recently began a six-month sentence for petit larceny, there were, for a time, only 35 people jailed, down from 90 before the pandemic, according to data compiled by the Vera Institute. Defendants had court dates pushed off, and judges went to extra lengths to allow people to wait at home rather than in jail. (New York’s bail reform law also went into effect in early 2020 and reduced jail populations even further.) By March, there were 54 people jailed in the county lockup.
The numbers and actual events in 2019 through June of this year tell a more complex story, however.
It's true that prior to the pandemic, the Genesee County Jail inmate population did hit 90, and even higher at times, but the reduction in the jail population initially had nothing to do with the pandemic and the data doesn't suggest the pandemic had much impact on the inmate population other than delaying inevitable criminal convictions.
The average number of inmates -- convicted and being held pre-sentence -- rather than "creep up" actually declined from April through June (The Marshall Project story was published in early June).
Long before any local judge had heard the term COVID-19, they were starting to obey a directive from the state court system to begin implementing bail reform. The Assembly and Senate passed the new limits on bail for criminal defendants in the summer of 2019 and even though the law wouldn't officially take effect until Jan. 1, 2020, judges and town justices were directed to take the new guidelines into consideration when deciding on bail for newly arrested defendants. Defense attorneys were well aware of this directive and were sure to remind judges of the new guidelines at every opportunity.
The Genesee County Jail population started dropping around August 2019 when there were 85 inmates in the jail. By December, that average daily count had dropped to 55. In February of 2020, when the novel coronavirus was still a distant threat, the local jail population fell to 37 and would remain at or about that level throughout the regional height of the pandemic.
In December 2020, when the total new number of COVID-19 cases in Genesee County peaked on Christmas Eve at 101, the average daily number of inmates hit its highest number since the beginning of the year, 42. As the number of new cases locally began to drop and more people were out and about, the average daily population of the jail did start to increase, hitting a total of 55 in April.
March and April were the first months in the previous 10 when more than 300 crimes were reported in Genesee County in a single month.
The drop in crime in 2020 could be a factor -- as some local officials think -- of police reluctance to interact with people unless absolutely necessary. But, perhaps, a lot of would-be criminals were equally reluctant to interact with other people, meaning fewer victims. Or with less activity in the community, there were just fewer opportunities to do something wrong. We'll never know for sure but the fact remains, the lower the number of crimes reported, the fewer people arrested, the fewer people held in jail (with or without bail reform), and the fewer people convicted of crimes.
The other factor was for much of 2020, most courts in the county were closed. That created a backlog of arraignments, plea agreements, trials, and sentencing.
"We're still pushing to sentence people convicted from more than a year ago," said Friedman. "If you think about what happened here, no courts, no grand jury for four months last year, we're playing catch up."
One tangential result of the delay in court cases, Friedman said, is it is much harder to get defendants to accept a plea. Why accept a plea, he noted, when you know the court calendar is jammed and you can put off going to jail just waiting for your case to get called before a judge?
Fewer people accepting pleas means fewer people in jail.
It's Schwartzapfel contention that she didn't intend to single out Genesee County as treating convicted criminals more harshly but to use Genesee County as an example of a national trend.
"I intended to use it as a county that was very much in step with how most other counties are handling jail populations post-pandemic," Schwartzapfel said.
This seems to indicate, then, that other counties nationally are not locking away many convicted criminals, which is counter to the narrative of the Marshall Project story, or, as the local data indicates, Genesee doesn't fit the national trend and wasn't a good example to use in the story.
The number of sentenced inmates being held in the Genesee County Jail dropped precipitously in 2020 and has remained relatively low. The highest average daily count of sentenced inmates in the Genesee County Jail in 2021 peaked at 11 in March, not even half of the lowest numbers of 2019.
The delays in sentencing have been the largest contributing factor to the drop in total inmate count locally (Schwartzapfel leaned on total population counts, not the different segments of pre-sentenced and sentenced inmates), so contrary to the impression left by the Marshall Project Story, Genesee County is not rushing to lock up new convicts.
But this isn't the doing of judges, as the Marshall Project Story states, it's the response of defendants that are leading to delayed jail sentences, Friedman said.
"Because of what has happened and we're still very slow in courts, people don't have the same incentive to accept a plea offer," Friedman said. "They think, 'let things go. Time is on my side."
Meanwhile, if your concern is bail reform, something Schwartzapfel said was not a focus of her story but does matter if your goal is to reduce the number of people held in jails, the local crime data offers little assistance to either side of the debate.
Crime dropped dramatically in 2020, the first full year of bail reform, but that almost certainly has more to do with the pandemic than anything else and the pandemic may have masked bail reform's full effect on crime. On the other hand, crime rates in four of the first six months of 2021 exceed the rate of 2019 but dropped below both 2019 and 2020 in June. So it's a mixed bag with too little data -- and the available data is tainted by other factors -- to lead to any meaningful conclusions.
The headline-grabbing unintended consequence of bail reform is anecdotal, not statistical, such as the repeated arrests of Devon Wright and the frustration of County Court Judge Charles Zambito at his inability to hold him, legally, in jail.
One clear result of bail reform, Friedman said, is, again, people are less likely to accept a plea offer.
"If I'm out on the street, why should I go in and plead guilty and go to jail," Friedman said. "When people are already in jail, they're more likely to say, 'Let's get this done.'"
The other downside of bail reform, according to Kevin Finnell, Friedman's first assistant, is that when defendants don't show up for court, judges can't issue warrants like they used to. They first have to reschedule the hearing and give the defendant up to another month to appear.
Since judges started implementing bail reform, the number of people held in jail before sentencing has been cut roughly in half, if not less. There are still 30 to 40 people a month held in jail who have yet to be convicted of the crime that led to their confinement. Bail reform isn't benefiting as many defendants as the public seems to believe.
Friedman has a sense that there are at least some defendants who, because of bail reform, have used the opportunity to re-offend, and that concerns him.
"Anecdotally, we all know of cases involving people who have been on the street who wouldn't have been otherwise and they continue to commit criminal offenses," Friedman said. "I can’t give you statistics or how many would have been locked up before bail reform. But I don't think you can say, 'Well, people who have been released, they're not committing crimes anymore because obviously, that's not the case."
A tractor-trailer turning left from Oak Street onto Main Street tonight had its entire rear wheel assembly detach from the trailer.
An officer explained that to keep a trailer from becoming a runaway vehicle if it detaches from the truck, the rear wheels are supposed to lock up. Tonight, the rear wheels on this brand new trailer locked up for no apparent reason.
Press release from Erica O'Donnell:
For too long, women working under and alongside men in power have had to silently endure harassment, abuse, and worse. Those days are over. No one, even those who hold some of the most powerful positions in the country, are above the law. It is long past time for Governor Cuomo to be held accountable for his behavior. He should save taxpayers the time and money involved in impeachment proceedings and resign immediately. If he refuses, I encourage my friends in the NYS Senate and Assembly to begin those proceedings without delay.
A Batavia resident figures he missed being involved in a serious accident by one second with a car "easily going 100 mph" on Bank Street Road yesterday.
"(The car) had to swerve towards college road," David Austin told The Batavian in an email. "I thought for sure he was going to wipe out but he corrected and I could hear him accelerate. Scared me more than I have ever been. If I would have made that turn 1 second later I probably wouldn't be here."
The alleged driver of that car was James Matthew Lepore, 23, of Rio Grande Drive, North Chili.
According to the Sheriff's Office, Lepore failed to stop for a deputy who spotted his car exceeding the 55 mph speed limit on Route 33 in Stafford. The deputy pursued and the car continued into the Town of Batavia and then into the city before heading north on Route 98. There law enforcement successfully deployed a spike strip and the car was forced to a halt.
According to the arrest report, Lepore "recklessly engaged in conduct that created a grave risk of death by unlawfully fleeing a deputy in a motor vehicle and intentionally went into the opposite lane of travel causing other motorists to swerve out of the way to avoid a head-on collision, all while traveling at speeds in excess of 90 to 100 mph."
After the stop, Lepore was allegedly found in possession of an unregistered firearm and a controlled substance.
Lepore is charged with:
Lepore was arraigned in Town of Batavia Court and under terms of bail reform released on his own recognizance.
The lead investigators in the case are Deputy Travis DeMuth and Investigator Kevin Forsyth. Assisting in the incident were Sgt. Andrew Hale, Investigator Howard Carlson, Investigator Joseph Loftus, Investigator Ryan DeLong, Deputy Kyle Krzemien, Deputy Josh Brabon, Deputy Kyle Tower, Deputy Andrew Mullen with K-9 "Frankie," members of Batavia PD and the State Police.
Lynn Bezon said she was driving on Center Street yesterday when she spotted the reflection of the mural at Glass Roots reflected in the window of Center Street Smoke House and had to stop and snap a picture.
Friends of the Richmond Memorial Library host monthly sale and Friend of the Year reception
Friends of the Richmond Memorial Library host monthly sale and Friend of the Year reception
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