Photocopier Fallout: Buffalo Mayor Blames PD

Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown says it was the IT department of the Buffalo PD that is to blame for not completely scrubbing data off of the copy machines that the CBS News Investigative Unit bought in a New Jersey warehouse.

Those machines, from the sex crimes and narcotics units of the PD, still had sensitive documents in the hard drives of the machines after they had been shipped to a wholesaler.

"The city's Information Technologies department has a system whereby the memory of the copiers is erased between one day and 30 days. Unfortunately, the Police Department had its own internal IT and was not utilizing the same process as Buffalo City Hall was," Byron told CBS affiliate WIVB yesterday.

WIVB Reporter George Richert learned that the two machines from the police department were sent back to the wholesaler the same week that all of the machines at the Buffalo city hall were also sent back to the leasing company.

Also this week in Buffalo, City Attorney Diane O'Gorman was fired. Mayor Byron told WIVB that the personnel change had, "not a thing" to do with the copy machine issue and that the corporation counsel, O'Gorman's boss, "has decided to move in another direction."

On April 19, the day the story aired, O'Gorman wrote in an e-mail that revealing information on the Buffalo PD hard drives in a news story would, "have very serious legal implications, liability on the part of CBS, as you know that the hard drives contain confidential info." A follow-up fax that day demanded the hard drives be returned within five business days. Both hard drives were mailed to the Buffalo Police department on April 20th.

Watch Armen Keteyian's Investigative Report