BUFFALO, N.Y. — State and Federal officials keep stressing the need to focus on domestic terrorism threats with more resources to detect and stop them.
But there are lingering questions especially since it turned out to state police had prior knowledge of the Tops market shooting suspect here in Buffalo.
2 On Your Side pressed for some explanations as we continue to ask the tough questions.
Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia put it this way, "This grant will help save lives. Let's be very clear about that."
That was his reaction to a $100,000 federal and then state-funneled grant for a program manager to help the Buffalo Police Department coordinate its previously announced threat assessment management team of investigators. Their work is aimed at detecting, handling, and making arrests if need be in domestic terrorism cases like the 5/14 Tops mass shooting.
Commissioner Jackie Bray of the New York State Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management told reporters, "The threats we face in our communities these days are far more diverse and far more intangible to get our arms around than they were 20 years ago.
Niagara County will get another $100,000 dollar grant for a similar unit Erie County Sheriff John Garcia this summer set up, with a $ 1 million county allotment, its own threat assessment team now trained by the Secret Service.
2 On Your Side asked Commissioner Bray, "Why weren't they brought in today to present this unified front of law enforcement? Where is Erie County Sheriff, John Garcia?
She replied, "Yeah - we're making five grants today...right?. We're making the grant to the city of Buffalo's Police Department."
Bray says the Erie County Sheriff's Office can apply for a similar grant.
Police Commissioner Gramaglia noted, "Sheriff Garcia and his team are absolutely very much embedded with what we are doing here."
The Erie County Sheriff's Office did not offer any comment on the topic.
We also asked Bray about the real need for officials, law enforcement, and agencies to have real coordination which was unfortunately shown to be a failure in "connecting the dots" as it was known in the 9/11 aftermath investigation. In that situation, government agencies were found to not always be working together.
So we asked "What can you do to assure our viewers that everything will be connected. And again why wasn't the Erie County Sheriff invited to be a part of this today?
Commissioner Bray responded, "So we think - we know - from looking across the country that what you want is many layers of opportunity to interrupt violence."
"These two threat assessment management teams will work together. You will see across the state that some cities will have threat assessment management teams and will work with county teams. Some counties in some of our more rural areas, you're gonna have regional threat assessment, management teams."
That prompted us to follow up.
"What more can be done at the state level to address that? And is some of this funding going for that as well because everybody says that was terribly overlooked?
"So obviously the terrorist attack that happened here in May was a horror. and public officials must be aware of the threat," Bray said.
So we pressed again "What about the funding for the state police in a rural area like Conklin, New York to have done more of a threat assessment in that situation?"
Bray answered "So that's one of the reasons we are focused across the state. One of the reasons that Governor Hochul devoted $10 Million dollars to the new unit that we run at Homeland Security for the domestic terrorism prevention unit is because she understands that we are going to have to be in every community."
RELATED: