Buffalo Police Department

What brokers know about Buffalo PD officers

Data-broker sites build close to the same profile for any Buffalo PD officer. Your name and current address. Prior addresses going back years. Your spouse, your parents, and the rough ages of your kids. Your vehicle. The Erie County property record with the parcel and the price you paid.

Spokeo, Whitepages, and VoterRecords do most of the work. Voter registration data, which in New York carries your home address and party enrollment, flows into commercial broker feeds. Erie County publishes property records online, and the surrounding county systems do the same. The brokers scrape them directly. A zip-code search pulls up clusters of officers in West Seneca, Cheektowaga, Lackawanna, Hamburg, Orchard Park, Tonawanda, Amherst, and Lancaster.

What New York law does for you

New York has no in-force law that lets an officer force a data broker to take down their personal information.

Two pending state Senate bills, S9088 and S9131, would regulate data brokers. S9088 would require brokers to register with the attorney general and would set up a single request any New York resident could use to ask registered brokers to delete their information. Neither bill has passed. Confirm the current status before relying on either. See the New York state guide for the full picture.

The 2020 repeal of NY Civil Rights Law §50-a changed how officer disciplinary records are handled. It made them releasable under the state Freedom of Information Law, with redactions for home address, family names, and witness information. §50-a was never a broker shield. Your exposure does not come from personnel files.

One federal law helps in a narrow spot. The Driver's Privacy Protection Act limits how your motor-vehicle record can be released, so your DMV data is not the easy way in. The open doors are property records, voter rolls, and court filings.

What still leaks

Three public sources stay open for a Buffalo PD officer.

1. County property records: Erie County and the surrounding counties publish parcel and ownership records online. Brokers scrape them directly.
2. Voter rolls: New York voter registration is available to other registered voters and runs downstream into commercial broker feeds.
3. Court records: New York's eCourts system publishes case information statewide. Civil filings, divorce, and traffic cases can show an address unless it was redacted at filing. Federal cases on PACER sit outside state protection entirely.

Why this reaches your family

The profile that names you names the people around you. A property record ties your home address to everyone who lives there. A relatives field lists your spouse and parents by name. Once a stranger has the address, the people at that address come with it.

Buffalo PD officers tend to settle in the same Erie County suburbs year after year, so one listing can point to a whole household. When an officer's name runs in local news coverage of an incident, that name is easy to match to a home address on a broker page.

What we do for Buffalo PD members

We scan the people-search and data-broker sites we track, then file removals through each site's opt-out process. We keep checking and file again when a listing comes back, including after Erie County or a neighboring county updates its property records. We handle most of the process and tell you clearly when a site needs something from you, such as an ID to verify a request.

Start with a free scan to see what is exposed. If your department or the Buffalo Police Benevolent Association wants to offer this as a member benefit, reach out.