The Buffalo News

LOCKPORT – Heather M. Rylowicz, the North Tonawanda woman found dead in her home Nov. 21, may have died as early as Nov. 2, prosecutors revealed Thursday as her boyfriend was arraigned on murder charges.

Brian C. Lowry, 32, of Ypsilanti, Mich., who had started a relationship with the victim during the summer, pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder, two counts of third-degree criminal possession of a weapon, five counts of fourth-degree grand larceny and single counts of third-degree grand larceny and petit larceny.

Deputy District Attorney Holly M. Sloma said the alleged murder weapons were a knife and a sledgehammer, and the weapons possession counts refer to those items.

Her colleague, Assistant District Attorney Elizabeth R. Donatello, said the third-degree grand larceny count and one of the fourth-degree counts pertain to the theft of Rylowicz’s car. The other four grand larceny counts accuse Lowry of stealing the woman’s credit cards, and the petit larceny charge relates to the theft of her cellphone.

The grand jury indictment says all the crimes allegedly occurred between Nov. 2 and 21.

An autopsy showed Rylowicz died of a combination of blunt and sharp trauma to the head and neck, Sloma said.

The 34-year-old woman’s body was decomposing when it was discovered the day before Thanksgiving.

“When they went upstairs, the blood the officer saw was already dry,” said Lowry’s attorney, Assistant Public Defender Christopher A. Privateer.

Neighbors called police after noticing that the woman hadn’t been seen for about two weeks, her car was missing, and her mail was piling up. They saw only her dog in the window.

Lowry was arrested Nov. 24.

Asked if the couple had a history of domestic violence, Sloma said, “I am not aware of any reported incidents, meaning reported to law enforcement, between the two of them.”

However, a neighbor told The Buffalo News on Thanksgiving Day that he had heard arguments between Rylowicz and her boyfriend during late summer.

“I have the best girlfriend (Heather) in the world!!” Lowry wrote on his Facebook profile. In a Sept. 10 post, Lowry wrote, “I LOVE YOU MY PRINCESS HEATHER!!!”

The victim’s father, Frank Rylowicz, and her brother, Douglas Rylowicz, came from Chautauqua County to attend the brief arraignment before State Supreme Court Justice Richard C. Kloch Sr.

They said Heather had been raised in Brocton and lived with her husband in Niagara Falls in 2006 and 2007 before they divorced.

The men said Heather met Lowry in June or July, and they met him at the Erie County Fair in August and also on a few visits he and Heather made to Brocton.

“He was quiet, kept to himself,” Douglas Rylowicz said.

He added, “He seemed to be kind of possessive, the kind of possessiveness you have when you’re in love. He always had his arm around her.”

Kloch ordered Lowry held without bail in the Niagara County Jail, pending a March 7 pretrial conference and a tentative trial date of June 17.

email: tprohaska@buffnews.com

WASHINGTON – The Food and Drug Administration warned hospitals nationwide against reusing insulin pens on multiple patients in March 2009, 19 months before the Buffalo VA Medical Center began a practice that could have prompted its nurses to do that very thing.

What’s more, the hospital continued running the risk of spreading deadly viruses through those insulin pens for more than two years until last Nov. 1, despite a January 2012 alert from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reiterating the FDA’s earlier warning.

News of the government warnings – and the Buffalo VA’s apparent ignorance of them – only further infuriated members of Congress who are concerned that the faulty nursing practice could have exposed upwards of 716 patients at the local hospital to HIV, hepatitis B or hepatitis C.

“This is unacceptable,” said Rep. Chris Collins, R-Clarence. “We all would like to know how something like this could have been ignored.”

Evangeline Conley, a spokeswoman for the Buffalo VA Medical Center, on Thursday did not deliver a promised response to questions about the warnings and whether hospital officials had seen them – or ignored them.

In any case, the warnings could not have been much clearer.

“Insulin pens are not designed, and are not safe, for one pen to be used for more than one patient, even if needles are changed between patients, because any blood contamination of the pen reservoir could result in transmission of already existing blood-borne pathogens from the previous user,” the FDA said in its March 2009 alert to health care professionals.

The FDA issued its warning about the reuse of the insulin delivery devices following reports that William Beaumont Army Medical Center in Texas had potentially exposed at least 2,000 patients to deadly viruses through the reuse of insulin pens.

At least one other hospital also followed the same faulty practice, the FDA said at the time.

Some of the patients at the hospitals tested positive for hepatitis C, although it is unclear whether their exposure stemmed from the reused insulin pins.

The FDA also issued a news release at the time of the alert in which Dr. Amy Egan, deputy director of safety at the FDA’s Division of Metabolism and Endocrinology Products, said: “Insulin pens are designed to be safe for one patient to use one pen multiple times with a new, fresh needle for each injection.”

Despite such warnings, the reuse of the insulin pens recurred at other medical facilities, most notably the Dean Clinic in Wisconsin, which contacted 2,345 patients to warn them about possible exposure to deadly infections because one former employee was reusing the devices between 2006 and 2001.

In the wake of that revelation, the CDC issued its own, even more blunt warning in January 2012.

“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has become increasingly aware of reports of improper use of insulin pens, which places individuals at risk of infection with pathogens including hepatitis viruses and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV),” the warning said.

“This notice serves as a reminder that insulin pens must never be used on more than one person,” the warning added.

Ten months after that warning was issued, the Buffalo VA discovered that it had not been properly labeling insulin pens for single-patient use and immediately abandoned that faulty practice.

Local lawmakers are aghast, though, that the VA either never saw or completely ignored the government warnings.

“It is astounding and infuriating that the FDA and the CDC issued reminders not to reuse these insulin pens on multiple patients yet – somehow – the Buffalo VA still failed to follow proper protocols,” said Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y.

Schumer and Rep. Brian Higgins, D-Buffalo, have called on the inspector general at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to investigate what happened at the Buffalo VA hospital.

Meanwhile, Collins called for an outside audit and a “top-to-bottom review” of all the hospital’s procedures and practices.

“Clearly there were warnings about this, but this also falls under common sense,” he said.

“Unfortunately, there was a two-year lapse before anyone noticed this, and a lot of people were put at risk.”

email: jzremski@buffnews.com.

The Buffalo and Rochester areas had the state’s worst job markets in December, as Western New York lost more jobs from a year ago than any other part of the state, according to the latest federal numbers.

The latest government data show that the Buffalo-Niagara Falls metropolitan area lost 2,300 private-sector jobs, a decline of 0.5 percent, compared with last December. The region also saw a drop of 2,100 nonfarm jobs – which includes both private sector and government – which equates to a 0.4 percent decline.

The job count fell in both the goods-producing and service sectors, with fewer jobs in trade, information and financial activities. Only education and health services and leisure and hospitality saw gains.

But some experts are suspicious of the numbers. The federal Bureau of Labor Statistics took over responsibility for monthly employment estimates from the state in March 2011, and even slight changes in methodology could mean big swings in data in a market that doesn’t usually change much from month to month. Revised data will be released in March.

“I think the labor market is not as weak as the numbers are currently stating,” said John Slenker, regional economist for the state Labor Department. He projected that the local economy should be showing slightly positive changes, not negative. “I think we’re going to see a little more strength when the revisions come out.”

In particular, Slenker cited the decline of 2,400 jobs in professional and business services locally. That includes a gain of 1,500 jobs in professional, scientific and technical services – law and engineering firms, for example – but a drop of 4,000 jobs or 13.4 percent in administrative and support jobs.

That sector includes temporary staffing firms that normally see upticks coming out of a recession as companies prefer to use temporary labor initially before staffing up. A reversal in this area would also reverse the overall job decline in the local market.

In Rochester, private-sector jobs fell 2,200, or 0.5 percent, while nonfarm jobs declined 1,500, or 0.3 percent. Only Elmira had a worse decline compared to its overall size. The Southern Tier community lost 900 private sector and nonfarm jobs, but that represented declines of 2.8 percent and 2.3 percent, respectively.

Binghamton also lost 200 private-sector jobs, down 0.2 percent and 600 nonfarm jobs, down 0.5 percent, while Kingston in the Hudson Valley lost 200 private-sector jobs for a 0.4 percent loss and 400 nonfarm jobs, for a 0.6 percent loss.

By contrast, jobs grew the fastest over the past year in Glens Falls, at 3.6 percent; Ithaca, at 3.5 percent; and New York City, at 2.4 percent.

The picture in Buffalo and Rochester contrasted sharply with the rest of the state, where all other markets added both private-sector and nonfarm jobs. Overall, New York added 119,800 private-sector jobs since December 2011, up 1.6 percent, and 118,300 nonfarm jobs, up 1.3 percent. That includes gains of 92,700, or 1.9 percent, in the 10-county downstate region, and 6,100, or 0.2 percent, in the 52-county upstate area, with increases in both urban and rural areas.

The nation as a whole posted a 1.4 percent gain in nonfarm jobs, with 1.9 million, and a 1.7 percent gain in the private-sector, with 1.92 million new jobs.

Meanwhile, the entire state added 34,300 private-sector jobs from November to December, reaching an all-time high job count outside of government. The 0.5 percent seasonally adjusted statewide job gain for the month drove the total private-sector job count to an all-time high of 7,353,000. For the full year, the Labor Department said, the state economy added 123,200 jobs in the private sector.

As a result, the state’s unemployment rate fell to a seasonally adjusted 8.2 percent from 8.3 percent in November, as 786,800 New Yorkers were out of work, down from 793,600 in November. Geographically, the rate in New York City remained unchanged at 8.8 percent, while the rest of the state declined to 7.8 percent from 7.9 percent in November.

The U.S. unemployment rate for December was flat with November, at 7.8 percent, but was down significantly from 8.5 percent a year ago. The statewide rate was unchanged from a year ago, while New York City’s rate was down from 9.1 percent and the rest of the state was up from 7.5 percent.

“The New York State economy closed out the year with 34,300 private-sector jobs added in December and 123,200 added to the state’s economy in 2012,” said Bohdan M. Wynnyk, deputy director of the state Division of Research and Statistics. “In addition, the state’s unemployment rate continued its downward trend in December.”

Nationwide, the country added 155,000 nonfarm jobs – which includes both the private sector and the government – and 168,000 private-sector jobs, for gains of 0.1 percent and 0.2 percent, respectively, from November to December. The state added 35,100 nonfarm jobs, up 0.4 percent.

email: jepstein@buffnews.com

LOCKPORT – As the smell of marijuana filled Common Council Chambers, Mayor Michael W. Tucker on Friday proclaimed a new police crackdown in the Genesee Street-Washburn Street area of Lockport.

The marijuana had been seized Thursday afternoon after a traffic stop on Washburn ended with the arrest of a Niagara Falls man on drug charges. It was precisely the kind of activity the crackdown is supposed to prevent. Tucker said he intends to designate an “impact zone” within the city whenever there’s a rash of crime. The first such zone will center on the corner of Washburn and Genesee.

Police Chief Lawrence M. Eggert said the zone will cover about 16 city blocks, roughly bounded by South Transit, Walnut, High and Erie streets.

He said that in November and December 2012, the number of calls for police service in that area was 27 percent higher than in the same period in 2011.

There have been two shootings in that area in the past month, Eggert said. Out-of-towners are believed to be responsible for most of the trouble, Tucker said, and a lot of it has been drug-related.

The city police will step up patrols in the zone, and the State Police and Niagara County Sheriff’s Office have agreed to help, Tucker said.

“We’re going to be meeting with some neighborhood groups,” Eggert said. “It’s important the neighborhood doesn’t think we’re targeting them. We’re trying to protect them.”

Tucker said that in the past two years, Housing Visions has invested $8 million in 33 new housing units after buying most of Genesee Street, and the city is trying to nail down a deal for Trek Inc. to move from Medina to Harrison Place at Washburn and Walnut streets. That would bring in nearly 100 jobs. “We’re not going backwards,” Tucker vowed.

He said the city already has a surveillance camera at Washburn and Genesee, and he has asked State Sen. George D. Maziarz, R-Newfane, and Assemblywoman Jane Corwin, R-Clarence, to line up state money for three more cameras. They cost about $8,000 each.

“I will have the Police Department establish traffic roadblocks within the zone at random times and locations, so the message is spread that, whether you are driving a stolen vehicle or just an uninspected vehicle, we will enforce the laws full force in those areas,” Tucker said.

He also ordered the Building Inspection Department to crack down on dilapidated buildings in the impact zone.

Tucker also urged the District Attorney’s Office to “offer less favorable pleas” after arrests in the impact zone.

About 4:40 p.m. Thursday, an officer pulled a driver over on Washburn for failure to signal a turn and not wearing a seat belt. He smelled a strong odor of marijuana in the auto. Driver George M. Stephens, 32, of 26th Street, Niagara Falls, fled and was eventually caught on Elm Court. Marijuana, crack and $128 were seized. Stephens was charged with third- and seventh-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance, unlawful possession of marijuana, resisting arrest, obstructing governmental administration and the traffic infractions. A passenger in the car, believed to be a Lockport man, escaped.

email: tprohaska@buffnews.com

LOCKPORT – A Niagara Falls man and a Lockport woman pleaded guilty to drug felonies Friday in Niagara County Court, and both were assigned to the judicial diversion program of court-supervised drug treatment.

Anthony A. Zaccarella, 60, of Maple Avenue, Niagara Falls, admitted to third-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance. Police seized heroin when they raided his home March 29.

Latasha L. Ford, 31, of Jackson Street, Lockport, pleaded guilty to third-degree criminal sale of a controlled substance for selling cocaine to a police informant May 24.

Since it is her second drug felony in two years, Ford faces a maximum of 12 years in prison if she washes out of diversion. Zaccarella faces a nine-year maximum.

In the 15 years since Jeff Bridges debuted as “the Dude,” a slacker who drinks White Russians and goes bowling when things get tough, the movie “The Big Lebowski” has taken hold as a cult favorite.

As the Dude likes to say, “The Big Lebowski” continues to “abide.”

That is especially true in North Tonawanda.

This evening at 6:30, the Riviera Theatre will host its fifth annual “Lebowski Event,” which begins with a cocktail hour that in the past has attracted more than 700 people who have consumed 45 gallons of the milk-and-Kahlua cocktails.

Then, after viewing the 1998 Coen Brothers film, many fans continue to wear their Lebowski-style bathrobes and go bowling afterwards.

The increasing popularity of the happening, which costs $13 a ticket, has been a surprise to Frank Cannata, who was reluctant when his son and friends first proposed it soon after he took the job directing the restored Riviera six years ago.

“Of course, on Monday I got a lot of ‘I told you so’s’ from my son and my friends,” said Cannata. “I’ve learned to appreciate the humor of the movie.”

Cannata likes watching the way the actors in the movie play off each other as the comedy unfolds about laid-back Jeffrey “the Dude” Lebowski, who enlists help from a high-strung bowling buddy – played by John Goodman – after thugs mistake him for a millionaire, who is also named Lebowski.

Cannata says the crowd is another highlight. Fans come from as far as Jamestown and Rochester, and in elaborate costumes.

They wear bowling shoes and Viking hats and bring urns to imitate the scene in the movie where tossing a dead friend’s ashes into the sea goes awry, and the wind blows them into the Dude’s face.

“Every year, we just find more and more people picking up on small details,” he said. “They keep their costumes on when they go bowling.”

The movie is a natural fit for the Tonawandas, said Doug Heim, owner of the National Bowling Store on Oliver Street, which donates a commemorative custom Big Lebowski bowling ball. Etched with movie-related quotes like “The Dude abides,” it is raffled off as a fundraiser for the nonprofit theater.

“Man, everybody here bowls,” Heim said. “You have doctors and lawyers that bowl. Anybody from a trash collector to a brain surgeon, and it’s not inconceivable to have them both in the store at the same time.”

While his own slacker days have slipped into the past, Heim can still relate to the Dude’s habit of going bowling when he’s stressed.

“That’s the answer to all the problems that they’re dealing with,” Heim said. “Many times, I would do that if I was frustrated with things at work, at home ... I would just go bowling and take it out on the pins.”

The Rev. Ethan Cole, an Episcopal priest in Williamsville, thinks the movie’s continued popularity and relevance come from how the Dude doesn’t try to control things after he encounters problems, such as the bungled drop-off of ransom money for the millionaire’s “kidnapped” wife.

“Things happen to him, and he still makes a good life for himself,” said Cole, a friend of Cannata who lobbied for the Lebowski event.

“He’s following his core values, and his life unfolds in front of him,” Cole said. “He has a kind of peace with it, no matter what. That is a kind of lesson: to take life on life’s terms and to roll with it.”

For Bernie Glassman, a Zen teacher, the movie helps interpret Buddhism.

He and Bridges, one of his students, collaborated to write “The Dude and the Zen Master” as a way to simply explain their philosophy.

“The Dude is not attached to the Dude, he’s totally open,” said Glassman. “The answering machine just receives whatever people say into it. Abiding nowhere means not having any attachments. ‘The Dude abides’ is a short statement of just being open to the universe.”

When Matt Nolan’s father finally watched the movie after a few years of badgering, he broke the news by waking Nolan up at 7 on a Saturday morning with a text that said, “The Dude abides.”

“At that point, I couldn’t be upset,” said Nolan, 28, who has gone to the party at the Riviera with friends for the last three years.

He likes the movie for its subtle jokes.

“The more times you watch it,” he said, “the more times you pick up the little things about it [that] just make it so great.”

To him, one of the funniest parts is the when bowler named Jesus does a little dance to the Gipsy Kings’ Spanish version of the Eagles song “Hotel California” after he bowls a strike.

“You can miss it if you’re not even thinking about it,” he said.

He likes going to the Riviera with about six friends for the simple, unusual fun of drinking White Russians, watching the movie as people in the audience hoot and holler, and then going bowling.

“Basically, it’s just connecting with a bunch of random strangers over the love of the same movie,” he said, “which is kind of cool.”

This year, for the first time, Nolan’s dad is coming along. Helping his father get the complete Big Lebowski party experience has Nolan feeling excited and, perhaps, a little Dude-like.

“It was kind of random,” he said, “but it’s a good thing.”

email: mkearns@buffnes.com

NORTH TONAWANDA – The Common Council voted unanimously this week to grant permission to traverse city property and connect power to industrial park buildings rehabbed by the growing Taylor Devices, a manufacturer of shock absorbers and earthquake protection for buildings and bridges.

This move is part of a $2.5 million expansion company President Douglas Taylor announced at a Council meeting in July.

“These two buildings are about to be occupied,” Council President Rich Andres said.

Last summer, Taylor outlined the plan of his company, based on Tonawanda Island, saying it would add operations at the new Buffalo Bolt Business Park and create 25 new jobs during the next two years.

Renovation plans for three buildings include a former Buffalo Bolt shipping department, which would be used for manufacturing.

Andres said he was pleased that Taylor Devices was beginning to start operations at the Oliver Street industrial park.

“This is one of our most successful businesses,” he said.

NIAGARA FALLS – The Niagara County Health Department announced it has obtained a limited supply of flu vaccine, which it will distribute at an appointment-only flu shot clinic from 9 a.m. to noon Thursday in the Trott Access Center, 1001 11th St.

The shots cost $34 each and are covered by most insurance plans. The department also has some free flu vaccine for children from six months to 18 years old, supplied by the federal government.

Appointments for immunizations may be made by calling 278-1903.

LOCKPORT – Members of the Rotary Club of Lockport and its sponsored High School Interact Club will gather donated nonperishable food Monday for St. John’s Outreach Center in the city.

Prospective donors may call David Greenfield of Rotary at 471-2585 to request a driver for food pickup. However, targeted neighborhoods are Carlisle Gardens, Northview, Lincoln Woods and the vicinity of Willow Street.

Rotary spokesman Paul Lehman said that in keeping with National Day of Service objectives, the clubs are supporting an activity consistent with honoring the legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., on the holiday celebrating his birthday.

NIAGARA FALLS – Mayor Paul A. Dyster will give his State of the City address Jan. 31, he announced Friday.

Dyster will give the speech at 5:30 p.m. at the Niagara Falls Culinary Institute, 28 Old Falls St.

It will focus on tourism as an economic driver in Niagara Falls and recent progress in that area, the mayor’s office said.

The gun used to unleash unimaginable carnage at a Connecticut elementary school a month ago was a Bushmaster semiautomatic rifle. It was equipped with a protruding pistol grip and a 30-round ammunition magazine, according to the Connecticut State Police.

Under Connecticut law, it was not considered an assault weapon.

The gun used to kill two firefighters in the Rochester suburb of Webster and wound two more was also a Bushmaster semiautomatic rifle. It, too, had a pistol grip and a 30-round clip, according to Webster police. A former neighbor of the shooter allegedly bought the gun for the killer – which was illegal because he was an ex-con.

That gun did not fall under New York’s definition of an assault weapon, although the magazine was banned.

But that changed earlier this week when a sweeping set of gun-control laws was enacted in reaction to the shootings in Connecticut and Webster.

The new state laws redefined such rifles and other semiautomatic weapons as “assault weapons,” banning them from being bought or sold in the state. The guns are not being confiscated, but owners must now register them.

Gun-rights advocates are furious over the new legislation and the use of the term “assault weapon.” That’s a scare tactic used by pro-gun-control politicians to push through tougher regulations, they say.

“What is that? Aren’t all guns assault weapons?” asked Rus Thompson, who heads New York State’s Tea Party and is organizing a “Gun Appreciation Day” rally in Niagara Square today that is expected to draw hundreds of gun-rights supporters.

So, what is an assault weapon?

Assemblyman Joseph R. Lentol, who helped negotiate and push through Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s bill, acknowledged that there’s some misunderstanding in the public about what defines an assault weapon.

“It’s a confusing term,” the Brooklyn Democrat said.

Under the new state SAFE Act, an assault weapon is now defined as a semiautomatic rifle or pistol with a detachable magazine and one or more military-style features.

Semiautomatic means that the trigger must be pulled for each bullet to be fired. Fully automatic weapons, which allow the user to fire continuously by holding the trigger down, have been banned in New York since the 1930s.

Semiautomatic shotguns with one military-style feature also are now categorized as assault weapons in New York.

For example, with semiautomatic rifles, the banned features would include a pistol grip, a folding or telescoping scope or even a bayonet mount. The same goes for semiautomatic shotguns with a military-style feature.

Previously, such weapons were banned if they had two or more such features – a state provision that mirrored the federal assault weapons ban that expired in 2004. New York’s “assault weapons” laws remained in effect.

All assault weapons, as newly defined in Cuomo’s legislation, are now illegal to buy or sell in the state. Anyone who owns such a weapon is allowed to keep it, but owners must now register anything categorized as an assault weapon with the state. They do not need to obtain a permit for them, as is required for pistols.

The new legislation also takes aim at high-capacity ammunition clips – only clips that hold seven or fewer bullets can be bought and sold in the state. Gun owners who had clips that can hold up to 10 rounds can keep them but cannot have more than seven rounds in the clip.

Under previous state and federal laws, clips that could hold more than 10 rounds had been banned from sale but were grandfathered into law. However, because there was no way to tell whether they were made or sold before 1994, the law was virtually impossible to enforce. The new legislation is aimed at closing that loophole.

The new laws also require background checks on all firearms buyers, including transactions between private parties.

Lentol said part of the confusion about the term “assault weapon” comes from people using the term interchangeably with “assault rifle.”

An assault rifle is an automatic weapon or one that can switch between single fire and multiple bursts that the military would use, Lentol said.

Assault weapons have been defined since 1994 as semiautomatic weapons with the detachable magazine and two military-style features, he said.

Cuomo and the Legislature changed the definition to one feature because “they are still assault weapons whether you have one feature or two features.”

Wilson Curry, an antique gun dealer who doesn’t sell what he calls “black guns” but owns an AR-15, a semiautomatic rifle, said the kinds of semiautomatic weapons that are now considered assault weapons are popular among hunters and target shooters.

“They’re high-end sporting rifles,” he said.

He explained that AR stands for “automatic rifle,” because when they were first invented, they were made for the military. But what’s been made available to the general public is strictly semiautomatic, meaning the trigger must be pulled to fire each bullet.

Jim Tresmond, a Hamburg attorney who is working with a group of lawyers across the state to file a lawsuit to stop the Cuomo’s new legislation, said that to him the term “is used to foster fear.”

He said: “Fear is a really emotional feeling in people. It’s basic, and if you can scare people half to death with language you are probably going to, let’s say, influence legislation one way or another. I think it’s just terrible.”

Harold “Budd” Schroeder, chairman of the Shooters Committee On Political Education, took issue with how the addition of military-style features makes a semiautomatic rifle an assault weapon.

“What it breaks down to is what I call Ugly Gun Syndrome,” Schroeder said. “I don’t know how [putting a feature on it] makes any rifle more deadly without it on.”

Connecticut State Police Lt. J. Paul Vance, who handled the news conferences in the wake of the Newtown shootings, told The Buffalo News that to him, it doesn’t matter what the gun that accused shooter Adam Lanza used is called or how it is categorized.

“It did a tremendous amount of damage,” he said. “That’s all they really need to know.”

email: mbecker@buffnews.com

Harold C. Shaver Jr. was sent to prison Friday because he failed to provide any care for four years for his 85-year-old mother, who spent 24 hours a day on a couch soaked with urine and feces, and whose body was covered in bedsores when she died nine days after emergency responders found her in her Lewiston home.

When he leaves prison, Shaver is likely to get something else: his mother’s estate, valued by his attorney Friday at $167,600.

That realization left Niagara County Judge Sara Sheldon Farkas flabbergasted.

“Is there any way on God’s green earth he can be prevented from getting that?” Farkas asked Friday while sending Shaver to prison for 16 months to four years, the maximum sentence for his felony guilty plea to second-degree endangering the welfare of a vulnerable elderly person.

The answer appears to be no.

Surrogate’s Court files show that in her 1974 will, Mary Shaver already had cut out a son, Michael, and left the estate to her other three children. In a 1976 will, Mary Shaver cut out a daughter, Catherine Long of Youngstown. And in the 1983 version, , daughter Michele Dorsey of Stuyvesant was cut out, leaving Harold Shaver with everything at his mother’s death, including the home in Lewiston, real estate in Allegany County and all her money and other property.

“This was a dysfunctional, fractured family for many years. There was very little contact between siblings,” Dorsey wrote in a letter to the court.

According to Shari Jo Reich, attorney for the estate, Harold Shaver’s sisters could challenge the 1983 will that makes him the sole heir. However, they would have to prove that if it weren’t for his treatment of their mother, she wouldn’t have died when she did.

The problem is that the autopsy discovered a previously unsuspected stomach tumor, which was listed on the death certificate as the cause of Mary Shaver’s death Oct. 30, 2011.

“[Harold Shaver] didn’t admit he killed her, and he didn’t. The cancer killed her,” Reich said.

The siblings, to prevent Harold Shaver from collecting the money, would have to prove otherwise. The same cancer finding was an obstacle to a homicide charge against him.

Reich said there was a $33,000 trust fund that Mary Shaver set up for her son, which should pass to him outside of probate. The remainder of the estate was valued at $130,000, and there was a $4,600 life insurance policy.

Assistant District Attorney Heather A. DeCastro said in court Friday that Harold Shaver was taking money from the estate even while his mother was in the hospital.

She showed the court photocopies of checks to “cash,” bearing Mary Shaver’s apparently forged signature, dated between Oct. 21 and 28, 2011, totaling $2,500. Mary Shaver was in the hospital from Oct. 21 until she died Oct. 30, 2011.

The prosecutor quoted an emergency medical technician who said that when he hoisted the woman off the rotten couch, “My fingers sank into the skin as if it were Jell-O or pudding. She was moaning in pain.”

Harold Shaver’s criminal attorney, Assistant Public Defender A. Joseph Catalano, called the photos of Mary Shaver’s sores “gruesome.”

He said Harold Shaver “has informed me his mother hated doctors. She didn’t want medical care. … His mother didn’t want visitors in the home, and he was doing what her wishes were. Should there have been something different done? I don’t know. I don’t know what her wishes were. He does.”

“I’m very sorry it’s come to this,” was all Harold Shaver told the judge.

“That’s it?” Farkas asked in surprise.

Michele Dorsey did not attend the sentencing but said in a letter to Farkas that her mother was “allegedly” injured in a fall in 2007 and couldn’t walk. Her brother Harold, whom she referred to in the letter as “Mr. Shaver,” was living with her, never married and hadn’t worked in two decades.

When Mary Shaver died, she had 8-by-10-inch bedsores on her back that went all the way to the bone, DeCastro said. There was so much urine and feces on the couch, that it, the carpet, the hardwood floor and the subfloor all had rotted.

When she finally was taken to Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center, doctors and nurses spent considerable time cleaning shreds of newspapers out of her wounds. Newspapers were her mattress.

Farkas said she couldn’t believe that Harold Shaver “genuinely thought it was his mother’s wish that she decompose on a couch while he took her money and went drinking … In my opinion, sir, you killed your mother, and you did it by way of torture.”

“No,” Harold Shaver said quietly.

“Yes, you tortured your mother to death,” Farkas shot back. “Wake up and smell the roses.”

DeCastro said Harold Shaver was a regular at a Lewiston bar.

DeCastro said the windows of the home were covered with heavy curtains, plastic and old newspapers to keep anyone from looking in to see the squalor. The heat and lights were usually off.

“This is how she lived while he took her money and went to bars and watched sports,” Dorsey wrote. “I truly believe he hoped he would come home one night and find that she had died and everything would be all right.”

She said as time went on, she found it impossible to reach her mother on the phone when Harold Shaver wasn’t home. She accused him of unplugging the phone when he went out to help keep his secret.

DeCastro said it was Dorsey who called authorities Oct. 21, 2011, after Harold Shaver refused to let her see her mother.

Dorsey’s letter said to Harold Shaver, “You told her she was a terrible mother and you hated her and she had ruined your life.”

Dorsey wrote that in the hospital, her mother “readily accepted medical help.” Her letter claimed that Mary Shaver “shook her fist at [Harold] … She died referring to Mr. Shaver [in vulgar terms].”

email: tprohaska@buffnews.com

For almost two hours, they waved their American flags proudly in the breeze that whipped through Niagara Square. They held up handmade signs, with messages that included “Gun Control Is Not About Guns. It Is About Control.” And they lustily booed their favorite political targets, including who they termed the “dysfunctional liberals in Albany,” the “terrorists in chief” in the state Capitol and Washington, D.C., and “Herr Cuomo.”

An enthusiastic crowd of roughly 1,500 to 2,000 gun-rights enthusiasts braved mid-40s temperatures and a stiff wind Saturday afternoon to make their presence – and their numbers – known at a Gun Appreciation Day and Second Amendment Rights Protest.

If there was one common theme, it’s that these gun-rights supporters are willing to fight for their right to bear arms.

“My weapon is my declaration that I am ready to fight,” Len Roberto, founder of Primary Challenge and a former congressional candidate, told the crowd. “If they want a fight, we will bring it to them.

“They are not going to come into our homes and steal our weapons, unless they want my ammo – one piece at a time.”

The crowd roared.

That crowd represented an interesting cross-section of Western New Yorkers, a large majority of them male, almost all of them white and many of them from the suburbs, small towns and throughout the Southern Tier. Many wore camouflage clothing and fatigues. Some proudly displayed their NRA baseball caps. And a few wrapped themselves in American flags.

J.J. Cherry, a 53-year-old Amherst man, came dressed as a civilian militia member from Revolutionary War days, to make his point.

“I’m here in support of Second Amendment rights and not supporting new knee-jerk laws that are really unenforceable and don’t do anything, in my view, to prevent these types of mass shootings that have occurred,” he said.

Cherry then looked out at the sea of faces peering at him from the northern end of Niagara Square, calling them a bunch of normal, typical, law-abiding citizens who are not going to roll over when others infringe on their rights.

“They only need to force us to give up one right, then all the rest are free for the taking,” he said.

The protest coincided with dozens of “Guns Across America” rallies throughout the United States in the wake of New York’s new gun legislation and a sweeping package of federal gun-control proposals unveiled last week at the White House.

Among the largest protests was in Albany, where an estimated 2,000 gathered.

Republican Assemblyman Steven McLaughlin told a crowd at the state Capitol that New York’s new law was an “abuse of power” by the governor.

In Buffalo, a unifying theme in the speeches from the Niagara Square steps, and the private comments from the crowd, touched on the historical aspect of this constitutional fight, with activists referring to Sandy Hook, Columbine, Sept. 11, World War II, the Civil War and the Revolutionary War.

“What they don’t understand is that the Second Amendment is the linchpin that holds all the amendments together,” said Pastor Rob Palaszewski, of My Father’s House church in Elma.

One sign held aloft in the breeze read, “Guns: Protecting American Families Since 1776.”

Rally organizer and Tea Party leader Rus Thompson said in opening the rally, “Welcome, patriots.”

The crowd in Niagara Square included young couples, senior citizens, dads with their sons, and mothers who described themselves as concerned about the future for their families.

“I believe in the Second Amendment, and I am a gun owner,” said West Seneca resident Elaine Winter, a member of the East Aurora Fish and Game Club. “I support what these people are saying up here today.”

Winter said she came to the rally with about 20 members of the East Aurora club. She said she is raising her 19-year-old daughter and 17-year-old son to shoot, and to respect the Constitution’s protection for gun use and ownership.

“We are hunters. They are both lifetime members of the NRA,” Winter said of her children.

She added that she was saddened by Cuomo’s action.

“I’m proud to be an American. But I’m really ashamed of our government,” she said. “You lose the Second Amendment, you lose all the other amendments.”

One dad in the crowd, Jeff Gerde, was there with three of his eight children – sons ages 8, 10, and 13.

The Strykersville resident said he brought his boys to the rally – driving half an hour each way to do so – to let them witness “freedom in action.”

“We own guns. We have guns. We’re law-abiding citizens,” said Gerde, a self-employed builder of barns and other structures.

Gazing around at the mass of people gathered in front of City Hall, Gerde added, “I think it’s fantastic. It’s our country at work.”

Lancaster resident Kimberly Allaire, 23, who said she was taught to shoot by her dad and has been hunting since age 16, said she thinks it “absurd” that gun ownership for someone like her would be endangered.

“There is nothing wrong with guns,” said Allaire, who works in private health care. “The whole state of New York is pretty pissed off about this whole thing. How can you take the Second Amendment and throw it in the trash?”

But, Allaire added, she does not necessarily think such gun restriction will work.

“They tried to ban alcohol,” she said. “Did that work?”

The crowd was extremely responsive to the parade of speakers on the steps of the Niagara Square monument, cheering loudly for Thompson’s roll call of state legislators who opposed the new state SAFE Act and saving its lustiest boos for Gov. Cuomo and President Obama, as well as state Sens. Mark J. Grisanti and Timothy M. Kennedy, the two state lawmakers from Western New York who voted in favor of the latest New York gun restrictions.

The congenial but feisty mood was punctuated by some strident tones, including a few signs with large swastikas and others that included Hitler-style mustaches on photos of Cuomo and Grisanti.

The crowd didn’t start chanting until former gubernatorial candidate Carl P. Paladino took to the microphone.

Paladino cited the watered-down version of the legislation that passed Albany last week and was quickly signed into law by Cuomo.

“All he wanted was a cosmetic bill so he could pound his chest and say, ‘Look what I did for the state of New York … I am Andrew Cuomo,’” Paladino said.

“Impeach Cuomo!” the crowd chanted. “Impeach Cuomo!”

Paladino then implored the crowd not to remain quiet on the issues, when government continues chipping away at people’s rights.

“No more,” he said, before leading the crowd in a lengthy back and forth: “No more. No more. No more…”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

email: gwarner@buffnews.com

and cvogel@buffnews.com

LOCKPORT – The operations and maintenance agreement for the restored 19th century Erie Canal locks is being crafted in such a way that it will permit the city to borrow money for the first stage of the construction project.

Mayor Michael W. Tucker said last week that the city needs to come up with a $360,000 match for $2.2 million in federal money earmarked for the restoration of two of the five locks in the “Flight of Five.”

Lockport’s Grigg-Lewis Foundation has given $173,313 for the Flight of Five project.

The city had hoped for new foundation or governmental support for the work to return the locks to working condition as a tourist attraction. But Tucker said he concluded, “Nobody’s going to give us money unless the city steps up.”

The Flight of Five is numbered 67 through 71 on the state’s old lock numbering system. Bidding is expected soon for the reconstruction of Locks 69 and 70 – the middle lock and the second lock from the top of the five stairstep locks. The city is expected to award a contract in June, with work slated for next winter.

It would cost $8 million to $10 million to restore all five locks, and the city simply doesn’t have the money.

But it did receive more than $3 million in federal aid more than a decade ago, and it has been drawing that down as costs are incurred. Most of those costs are engineering and architectural studies, plans and drawings by Bergmann Associates.

In order to release the remaining $2.2 million for construction, the city is required to have $360,000 in matching funds.

“It would be foolish of us to lose that money. We can’t lose that $2.2 million,” Tucker said.

In order to clear the way for the bond issue, Corporation Counsel John J. Ottaviano has inserted a couple of lines in the draft of the operating agreement with the state Canal Corp., which owns the locks.

The language points out that the Flight of Five lies “in the heart of downtown Lockport, adjacent to City Hall, Main Street and Canal Street Gazebo Park.”

Ottaviano said that language “establishes a nexus” between the locks and public places, thus legalizing Fight of Five borrowing as a benefit to public places.

The Flight, used as a spillway for nearly 100 years, since the two current steel locks were installed, was built out of wood and opened with the canal in 1825. The wood was replaced with limestone later, and the operating agreement says 1842 conditions are the ones the project is aiming for.

The agreement commits the city to paying all costs connected to the Flight restoration project and its eventual operation and maintenance, including that of a replica canal boat which is supposed to be used to show how the locks worked. The city also agreed that the restoration and its operation will not be permitted to get in the way of current canal operations.

email: tprohaska@buffnews.com

LOCKPORT – Members of the Rotary Club of Lockport and its sponsored High School Interact Club will gather donated nonperishable food Monday for St. John’s Outreach Center in the city.

Prospective donors may call David Greenfield of Rotary at 471-2585 to request a driver for food pick-up. However, targeted neighborhoods are Carlisle Gardens, Northview, Lincoln Woods and the vicinity of Willow Street.

Rotary spokesman Paul Lehman said that in keeping with National Day of Service objectives, the clubs are supporting an activity consistent with honoring the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., on the holiday celebrating his birthday.

Deborah McElwain Rapp has made fewer regular stops in Niagara Falls in the years since her parents died.

But even now , the city where she grew up is still influencing her passion for water that gave her life its current focus of love and adventure, and soon a 4,000-mile sailing trip from the Caribbean.

It all started last summer when Rapp, 63, married John Rapp, a fellow boater she met online, as they sailed the outer harbor on the Spirit of Buffalo, a replica of an old-fashioned schooner.

Their plan of a new life together included selling their individual boats – her racing sailboat and his motor boat – and buying a new one they could use to travel and explore the tropics and Great Lakes.

As a racer of sailboats for 34 years, Rapp’s boating life included the three years she spent living on her last boat while it was docked in the outer harbor after her divorce a few years ago.

Her childhood home of Niagara Falls gets part of the credit, she said.

“I think when you grow up around so much water, it becomes a part of your comfort level. That is, you seek it out wherever you go, because it is familiar and reassuring to be near,” she said recapping an email conversation. “When I travel, the river and lake or ocean is the first place I want to visit. Like your favorite childhood meals, the water is ‘comfort food’ for the soul.”

She bought her first sailboat in 1976, years after buying a calendar with a picture of a boat and tropical island. “I saw that picture and I visualized myself in that spot,” she said. “It’s corny and goofy and stupid, but that’s the truth. That calendar sat on the wall until it became our life. I truly believe in visualization. I visualized my life exactly as it is today, and it has become beyond my wildest dreams.”

About a week after her sailboat wedding, her visualizations kept working as the couple’s first married adventure began when they left for the British Virgin Islands to start shopping for a big new sailboat, which they found 200 miles away on the island of Antigua.

When their 44-foot sloop needed repairs and upgrades, their boat-finding honeymoon turned into a four-month Caribbean adventure, ending in October when they left their new boat parked in Grenada, 75 miles north of South America. They flew home and will return to pick it after the ski season ends. Lately, Rapp, a retired public affairs coordinator from the state Office of Developmental Disabilities, has been teaching skiing part time at Holiday Valley with her husband. At end of March, the Rapps will fly down to pick up their boat and spend about six months slowly bringing it to New York.

What did you get out of last year’s trip?

It was a 24/7 chance, every minute of every day to get to know each other. I married the right guy. He didn’t turn out to be as perfect as I thought he was, and I’m sure he felt the same about me.

How did it affect your marriage?

We learned more about each other in four months than people do in four years. We found out how each other would be in some rough situations. One of them was when the main sail got stuck while we were out sailing. It got stuck heading into the harbor. It got stuck in the mast. We had to send the other person on the boat to the top of the mast while I was under sail. He had to stay up there 45 minutes .

We learned how we can act together in an emergency. What things we communicated well to each other and ways we didn’t. I thought he understood more than he did. I had to exercise my patience, which is not my strength. I’m getting better at it.

What’s next for you, your husband and the boat?

We are flying back to Grenada on March 26 and starting the 4,000-mile adventure back to Buffalo, and this will mean taking several multi-day overnight passages. You leave one city and you sail three days until you get to the next point of land.

How do you feel about that?

Apprehensive, but we will hire extra crew to go with us. I think what John and I are developing, for one thing, better communication. We’re starting to understand the little nuances about each other that will help us. It won’t all be sunset sailing along a coconut-fringed beach ...

We learned that we can overcome all those things because we have a very deep love for each other. We can let go of the little stuff and put the marriage on top of it, making it more important. Our love overcame those things. All those ups and downs. Now we truly believe we can do anything together.

What is the boat’s name?

Mahayana. It means, in Buddhist scripture, great vehicle. The Mahayana is the Buddhist scripture that leads you to enlightenment. The boat is going to be our great vehicle to find out more about ourselves, our relationship and the depths of our spiritual understanding.

You spent weeks in two islands – Antigua and Saint Martin – waiting longer than you expected for work on your new boat to finish?

One day in U.S. time equals two weeks in island time. They’d say, “Oh yeah, we’ll get done tomorrow.” We’d see it completed in two weeks. Americans want things done immediately.

Island time, they take their time. They do it right. We have the perfect boat now. The boat of our dreams.

After boat friends told you to slow down and explore, you extended your trip by taking a detour south. This included a stop in Dominica to find a friend of a friend, a woman whose address was “on the top a mountain, near a red shack”?

We found her. You wouldn’t believe how we did it: By talking to people on the beach. We climbed up this mountain in a pickup truck. It took us forever to get there, but we found her. We can’t believe we survived the ride. She had grapefruit trees and coconut trees and avocados as big as your head. She just lived on this little platform.

Is there a lesson in that?

The lesson is to abandon your plan and go with the flow. Our plan was not to stop in Dominica. At the last second we decided to anyway, just to take an adventure and find this mystery woman named Chitah. We took a shot in the dark and it paid off.

Know a Niagara County resident who would make an interesting column? Write to: Q&A, The Buffalo News, P.O. Box 100, Buffalo, NY 14240, or email niagaranews@buffnews.com.

LOCKPORT – A new set of guidelines for assigning defense lawyers to clients may lead to increased costs for Niagara County – or not, depending on whom you ask.

The county has a small staff of part-time conflict defenders that represent defendants whose cases can’t be taken by the public defender’s office.

The most common reasons for that situation include the existence of multiple defendants in the same case, or when it is learned that one of the public defenders has previously represented a witness in a case.

When public defenders are ruled out, the court staff has the job of finding a private lawyer willing to take the case, at a state-mandated fee of $75 an hour for felonies and $60 an hour for misdemeanors. Those tabs are paid by county taxpayers.

The salaried conflict defender staff was created in 2006 to reduce the number of times the courts have to do that. Since its founding, the conflict defender’s office has saved the county an estimated $1.7 million in legal fees.

But the conflict defenders, all veteran lawyers, sometimes have conflicts of their own, forcing the court to assign counsel to affected defendants.

Last year, the state Office of Indigent Legal Services issued new rules and standards for how conflict attorneys are selected and supported.

“They’re not new. They’re largely taken from the existing [state] Bar Association standards,” said William J. Leahy, director of the Office of Indigent Legal Services.

The standards are meant to make cases as fair as possible for defendants who can’t afford a high-priced private lawyer. Leahy said that’s a major priority for the court system.

Niagara County Legislature Vice Chairman Clyde L. Burmaster said he’s convinced the standards will drive up county costs for defense of indigent clients.

“It doesn’t have to be the best there is. It’s the best [the available] money can buy,” Burmaster said. “We feel it’s more to benefit the legal system in New York City.”

The new standards say conflict defenders should have the access they need to expert witnesses and investigative services.

Burmaster said he doesn’t believe the county should have to pay for DNA testing and other expert interventions for the defense. The conflict defender’s budget for expert witnesses is only $8,000 this year, which was a cut of $2,000 from 2012.

Leahy said counties aren’t allowed to cut conflict defense too much. The 2010 funding level is the minimum that must be provided. For Niagara County, that was $587,918, including $175,000 for private counsel assigned when conflict defenders are ruled out.

The 2013 budget is $689,752, including $260,000 for outside counsel. The latter figure is an $18,000 cut from 2012, but in a sense the budget is irrelevant. If the court assigns a lawyer to handle a case, that lawyer must be paid. The county isn’t allowed to say lawyers can’t be assigned because the funding has run out.

Reviewing their bills and making sure the bills are legitimate is the job of the assigned counsel administrator, who also heads the six-person conflict defender staff.

Robert M. Pusateri, who had headed the office since its founding, retired at the end of 2012. On Jan. 2, the Legislature appointed lawyer Kathleen A. Kugler of Lockport to succeed him, at a salary of $31,419 a year.

“I don’t have authority to hire and fire anyone,” said Kugler, the niece of well-known Lockport political gadfly George Kugler. “We just oversee the vouchers, the billing statements.”

Leahy said the standards are likely to have their greatest effect on rural counties without deep pools of lawyers to draw from. The standards call for appointing lawyers who have enough training and experience to match the complexity of the cases they may be confronted with.

“Niagara’s not one of the rich counties, but we’ve had good cooperation from up there,” Leahy said.

He said counties may compete for $4 million in available state grant funding this year and for another $4 million that’s expected to become available each of the next three years; those funds can be used to bolster conflict defense budgets.

Leahy also is asking for a $10 million increase in the next state budget in funding to relieve lawyers handling indigent defense from their proverbially heavy caseloads.

“It’s not correct to say we’re going to use the standards to bludgeon the counties into compliance,” Leahy said.

David J. Mansour, a lawyer who frequently accepts court assignments in Niagara County Court and Niagara Falls City Court, said he doesn’t see the new standards affecting Niagara County’s courts.

“At least at first glance, what they’re talking about happens in Niagara County,” Mansour said. “It’s been my observation that judges wouldn’t assign people to anything where the judge doesn’t have confidence in the ability of the attorney to handle these types of cases.”

The state rules call for fast assignment of conflict attorneys. Mansour said, “In City Court, as soon as the court is aware of a conflict, someone gets assigned within 24 hours. And the same is true in County Court. … At no time are people unrepresented.”

Any lawyer who practices criminal law can place his name on the list for potential assignments, but in practice, judges turn again and again to a pool of regulars who are willing to step into cases for the $60 to $75 an hour the state allows. Many well-known lawyers charge far more than that and thus are seldom, if ever, seen on court-assigned cases.

“In City Court, you might spend an hour and resolve a case. You might spend 100 hours on a County Court case,” Mansour said. “It’s unpredictable.”

Mansour said one of the problems with assigned counsel is building up trust with a client who has no say over who his lawyers is, because they don’t understand the process once it has to go beyond a public defender.

email: tprohaska@buffnews.com

LOCKPORT – After more than two years of planning by the Niagara County’s Sheriff’s Office, a new and improved Mobile Command Center became operational last week.

Featuring the latest in communications technology, the nearly $360,000 command unit provides a rolling dispatch center and conference room that will respond to major incidents when a crime scene unit or task force is required for an extended period.

“I’ve been in lots of them in my career, and this is the nicest one I’ve set foot in,” Sheriff James R. Voutour said regarding his experience with mobile command centers.

The unit is part of a $1 million investment in the Sheriff’s Office, which also includes a $750,000 two-story storage garage for evidence, equipment and vehicles, including the command center.

But unlike the new building – still in the planning stages – that will be funded by Niagara County taxpayers, the Mobile Command Center is funded by a federal grant, with $330,000 coming from the Department of Homeland Security’s Urban Area Security Initiative.

The remainder was funded by drug asset forfeitures.

“We got a lot of use out of the old one, but it was falling apart, and it had become a safety concern,” said Sheriff’s Administrative Capt. Michael P. Dunn. “The possibilities we have are phenomenal.”

Voutour said that it took five years to receive the federal funds. The new unit, which replaces a 13-year-old command center, provides technology that wasn’t even available that long ago.

Voutour and Dunn said that some of the large-scale responses to incidents such as explosions, plane crashes, missing-person searches, homicides and standoffs are ideally suited to the Mobile Command Center. It also will be useful if Niagara County is called on to assist in a larger emergency, such as a major storm.

“The old command center was basically an RV with the bedroom taken out. It was tight, with just two dispatchers. Now we have room for six to seven dispatchers to sit comfortably and a separate conference area,” Dunn said.

“In the past, we had a laptop – just one – and a cellphone,” Voutour said. “Now the entire system runs off an app that allows a number of both iPads and iPhones to connect. Just in case we have any problems, we will be putting in switches to manually operate the system.”

The Mobile Command Center has nine dedicated radios, both UHF and VHF, 12 computer screens/monitors – with two screens for each computer and dedicated iPads, said Special Deputy/Radio Technician Don Burrows, who explained that video can be routed to any screen from any source.

The setup allows mobile dispatchers access to anything that would be available at the main dispatch center in the county Public Safety Building.

The new Mobile Command Center is about 10 feet longer, according to Dunn, and has its own satellite hookup. It allows both Niagara County dispatchers and personnel from any participating departments to work together in an emergency by signing on to the security-protected app.

“It’s really a dual-function vehicle” for communications and a command post, said Deputy Marc E. Kasprzak, senior dispatcher in the Sheriff’s Communications Office. “The front half is set up as a communications room for up to seven dispatchers, which allows us to have communications at the incident.

“The technology we have in this vehicle,” he added, “is going to allow us to take different radio systems and tie them together as one radio. If we have two agencies on scene and for some reason they couldn’t tune their radio to each other’s channels, we actually have a piece of equipment that allows us to tie them together. Interoperability is huge.”

Kasprzak said technology has even changed in the time since they started planning for this command center.

“We didn’t even have multiband radios when we started planning,” he said. “The plan was to put in more radios, but now we can consolidate radios.”

Voutour said, “It’s almost like a dispatch center on wheels. With narrow banding, we can have tactical channels and allow the entire incident to be on one channel and then allow all the other work being done in the county to be done on the main channel, so the incident isn’t overtaking the radio room.”

Kasprzak explained that “normal business of the county doesn’t stop. Dispatchers have their same burden, but we can take the burden of the incident off of them to allow them to do their normal job.”

The rear of the vehicle is a conference area that seats half a dozen people or more and has several monitors and video screens. A rear camera system outside the truck allows those inside the conference room to monitor an incident. An interactive digital “smartboard” lets investigators pull up maps or other digital materials and electronically draw on it, as if it were chalkboard.

Dunn said the door to a conference room can be closed for privacy to conduct interviews. “We really had no connectivity,” he said of the old command center. “This allows us to have a bunch of people” in the conference room – “the command staff who make decisions who can see what is going on.”

Voutour said representatives from the Montana company – Nomad Global Communications Systems – that both provided and wired the system, were here in the last week for setup and training.

“We don’t have a date set” for first use of the command center, Voutour said, “but if there was a plane crash this weekend, we’d be out there and using it.”

As for the new unit’s longevity, Voutour said, “We want this to be used for 20 years.”

email: nfischer@buffnews.com

A Niagara Falls man was arraigned in Niagara County Court on charges that he nearly struck a police car and did crash into another vehicle about 5:30 a.m. Sept. 1 on 10th Street in that city.

Lysander C. Scott, 27, of LaSalle Avenue, pleaded not guilty to felony driving while intoxicated, first-degree aggravated unlicensed operation, failure to keep right, running a stop sign and leaving the scene of a personal injury accident.A woman had just finished moving into her new apartment when someone broke in and stole more than $2,300 worth of property, Niagara Falls police said.

The victim told police she finished moving all her belongings into the 20th Street building just before 7 p.m., then locked up and left for about three hours. Upon returning, she found that someone had entered the residence. Items stolen included a 42-inch television, a pair of portable TV’s, a computer tower and monitor and a pair of Air Jordan sneakers.James W. Kohl, 32, and Kimberly Ann Leonard, 51, both of Orangeport Street in Gasport, were arrested on resisting arrest and other charges after being stopped for speeding about 6:15 p.m. in the 1700 block of Niagara Street in Niagara Falls.

Kohl is charged with resisting arrest, escape, falsely reporting an incident and obstructing governmental administration.

Kohl was paroled in April 2011 from the state’s Franklin Correctional Facility after serving a term for a Buffalo-area car theft and attempted burglary. He was captured because of the state Division of Parole ankle monitor he was wearing Sunday, according to a police report.

Leonard faces possible charges for a burnt marijuana “blunt” allegedly found below her front passenger seat and the 15 hydrocodone tablets found in an unmarked container in her purse. Police reported Kohl was accused of driving 40 mph in a 30 mph zone.

• The owner of a Main Street business in Newfane reported an attempted break-in overnight.

Niagara County sheriff’s deputies reported someone pried open a sliding service window at Tammy Joe’s Cafe at 2911 Main St. A piece of wood was inside the window, preventing it from opening, according to deputies. Damage was listed at $300.

• A woman caught on security tape snatching a wallet in a convenience store last weekend is being sought by Niagara County sheriff’s deputies – and the search may be a little easier since the woman used a store loyalty card with her name on it before she left.

A clerk at a convenience store in the 2200 block of Saunders Settlement Road on the Tuscarora Reservation told deputies that she sat down at a table to have some ice cream and set her wallet down on the table at 6:30 p.m. She said when she spilled some ice cream on her arm, she left the table briefly to get a napkin and when she returned, her wallet was gone. The wallet contained $110 in cash.

Store security told deputies that the incident was captured on tape, which shows an unknown white woman wearing a brown jacket and blue jeans walk up to the table and take the wallet. Before leaving, the woman went to the register and paid for some items using a store loyalty card.

Store security officers said they would contact patrol with the name on the loyalty card.

Patrol reported that the investigation remains open.

• Someone forced their way into a closed motel and took 20 feet of copper from the hot water tank room some time overnight.

A rear door in the Niagara Falls Motel at 8710 Niagara Falls Blvd., Niagara Falls, which had been screwed closed, was found forced open, police said. Once inside, the suspects pushed their way inside another partially secured door and then entered the hot water tank room where they removed the copper pipe, valued at $250.Vandals caused hundreds of dollars in damage to a car and home, spray-painting both the home and car and puncturing a tire in the 200 block of 83rd Street, Niagara Falls.

The victim told police that sometime between midnight and 9 a.m., someone came onto his driveway and punctured the passenger side front tire and used white spray paint to damage the hood of the vehicle, the passenger side door, and the fender and then vandalized the house, by spray-painting the siding on the house, a door and a north side window. Damage was estimated at $625.

• Niagara County sheriff deputies responded to an alarm at Amphibious Outfitters in Gasport just before 12:30 a.m.

No one was found in the store at 4433 Main St., but a north side door, which had been covered with plywood, was completely ripped off, according to deputies. Deputies also found an interior door, which led into a storage room, kicked in.A Niagara Falls man, who pleaded guilty to a felony violation of Leandra’s Law for driving drunk with children in his vehicle, was placed on five years’ probation by State Supreme Court Justice Richard C. Kloch Sr.

Marlowe J. Smith, 31, of 23rd Street, also must serve 60 days in the county work program and pay $605 in fees and surcharges.

His blood alcohol content was measured at 0.24 percent, three times the legal threshold for intoxication, when he was pulled over June 25 in the Falls while driving his girlfriend’s car with her children, ages 1 and 6, in the back seat. Smith said the woman is now his former girlfriend.

• A Buffalo man admitted in Niagara County Court that he sold cocaine to a police informant in North Tonawanda June 21.

Eugene J. Davis, 53, of Shirley Avenue, pleaded guilty to third-degree criminal sale of a controlled substance and was admitted to the judicial diversion program of court-supervised drug treatment by County Judge Matthew J. Murphy III.

If Davis succeeds in the program, his charge will be reduced to a misdemeanor and he will be placed on probation. If he fails, the repeat felon faces a maximum of 12 years in prison.

LEWISTON – The Niagara River Region Chamber of Commerce, which is just getting settled into its new home in the Lewiston Welcome Center and has elected a new chairman of its board of directors, is looking forward to its first major public activity of the new year – a “business blender” from 5 to 7 p.m. Feb. 21 in Brennan’s Irish Pub, 418 Main St., Youngstown.

The Chamber’s move Jan. 1 into the village-owned Welcome Center at 895 Center St. in Academy Park marked a major milestone in the organization’s mission to promote the quality of life, history, tourism and business among its nearly 400 members in the towns of Lewiston and Porter and surrounding areas.

“It was the right move at the right time,” Chamber President Jennifer Pauly said last week. “We’ve formed a great partnership with the village, and it’s a win-win situation for all of us.”

Until now, the Welcome Center was staffed by volunteers who were not always available, and visitors sometimes found there was nobody there to welcome them or to recommend things to do and places to go in the lower Niagara River region.

Mayor Terry C. Collesano and trustees on the Village Board were looking for a way to make the center more accessible and a more valuable asset to the community.

By coincidence, the Chamber’s five-year lease on the building it formerly occupied at North Third and Center streets expired at the end of 2012, and the Chamber staff was looking for a more visible presence in the center of the village and possibly for a reduction in its rent. The rent had ranged from about $10,000 a year to about $18,000, depending on various reports.

So the Village Board and the Chamber forged a deal under which the Chamber’s small staff would keep the welcome center open from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on weekdays and would pay for utility services, but the village would charge no rent. In addition, the village would reduce its subsidy for the Chamber to $4,000 a year from the previous $9,000.

Collesano and Pauly said the arrangement would save money for both the village and the Chamber, and volunteers will still be available to staff the center on weekends and extra hours during the busy summer tourist season. Collesano said the move helps “the village to cut our costs and we’re helping the Chamber. It’s a benefit to us both.”

The new lease continues through Dec. 31, 2017.

Pauly said the non-profit Chamber of Commerce has been in operation since 2005, when it succeeded the former Lewiston Business Association. Its permanent staff consists of Pauly, finance director Suzanne Raby, and a part-time administrative assistant, Linda Antonucci.

Richard J. Haight, vice president of Advanced Design Group, a professional engineering company, was tapped to succeed George Osborne as the Chamber’s new chairman of the board at the group’s annual reorganization meeting earlier this month. Osborne is president of Artpark.

The Feb. 21 “business blender,” which is open to the public, will be an opportunity for residents and business operators to “network” with one another, learn about attractions in the area and take advantage of local assets, Pauly said.

What sorts of activities does the Chamber of Commerce recommend for visitors during the cold winter months when many attractions are closed and riverfront activities are limited?

“We recommend the two wine trails in Niagara County that begin near Lewiston, the free Power Vista at the New York Power Authority’s Niagara Power Project and ice skating at the Town of Lewiston’s newly enlarged rink in Academy Park,” Pauly said.

She said the skating rink has enjoyed “a booming attendance of both residents and visitors – and it’s free if you have your own ice skates.” Skates also are available for rental at the rink.

Once past the winter season, one of the Chamber’s major events will be its annual awards dinner, which will be open to the public May 17 at Niagara Falls Country Club in the Town of Lewiston.

Pauly said businesses of the year and citizens of the year will be honored at the dinner. She said nominations for those awards are just now beginning to be considered.

email: rbaldwin@buffnews.com

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