Tonawanda officers to be charged with Taylor's Law violations

BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) -- Dozens of police officers in the Town of Tonawanda will be charged with violating the state’s Taylor Law after a town investigation found the officers participated in an illegal strike.

Sources told WIVB News 4 that the town wrapped up its investigation into the alleged illegal strike last week and sent its findings to the state’s public employment relations board. Letters to individual officers are set to go out this week.

Town leaders said officers participated in an illegal job action by operating a ticket strike from mid-January to the first week of February. The town has said that the strike was a response from the police union after an officer -- who has since resigned -- was disciplined.

Numbers provided by the town last month showed that 123 tickets were issued by officers during that period. Comparatively, more than 550 tickets were issued during the same period last year, more than 650 were issued in 2023, and over 430 were issued in 2022.

Sources told News 4 nearly 50 officers will face Taylor Law violations -- including members of the executive committee, who town leaders said both participated in the strike, and encouraged the strike.

The state’s Taylor Law makes it illegal for public employees -- such as teachers, correction officers and police officers -- to strike. Taylor Law violations come with the possibility of loss of pay, fines, and additional discipline for misconduct.

The Town of Tonawanda Police Club recently created a website stating that Tonawanda Police Chief James Stauffiger should step down.

In a statement, the union said: "The PERB charges filed against our union only proves one thing -- that the Town Supervisor is more interested in needlessly wasting the taxpayers' money on retaliatory witch-hunts that only seek to persecute our essential workforce.

"As we have maintained, the PERB charges are based on an erroneous and flawed investigation with fabricated information disguised as facts."

Following the union's statement, Town of Tonawanda Supervisor Joe Emminger sent this statement to News 4: "The PERB charges that were filed this week against the Police Club, were in response to the investigation the town was required by state statute to conduct. As a taxpayer, do you want your elected officials to pick and choose what laws need to be enforced and to close their eyes and turned the other way when something that is required by a state statute happens? I would hope that all law abiding people in our region would agree, that as elected officials, we shouldn’t and can’t close our eyes once we become aware of situations like the one we find ourselves in. No one benefits from what we’re going through but we had to follow the law.

"This public relations campaign the Police Club is running is being orchestrated by a NYC PR firm, with absolutely no ties to the region and who couldn’t care less about what’s takes place in the Town! The PR Firm/Police Club use words like retaliation, bullying, corruption to get the public’s attention, yet when asked, they can’t provide me with specifics! For whatever reason this has become very personal for Police Club President Andy Thompson and when you combine that with a New York City PR firm pulling the puppet’s strings, this is where it ends up."