His last name may be Hy but he goes low: Crooked Buffalo NY cop gets prison VFW post shut down

The Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) had created Post 12226 inside of Sterling CF. It was an opportunity for veterans currently serving time to find a way to serve their communities despite their pasts. As noted on the VFW website, “The Post hopes to serve as an example for other prisons across the country, which could create a boon for VFW membership. “We are the pilot program setting the model for all future Posts formed inside any other prison around the country,” said Post Commander Tom Stewart, a Navy vet who served aboard the USS Tripoli during Operation Vigilant Warrior in the mid-1990s. The decision to grant the Post’s charter was not without controversy. “Some have a hard time seeing incarcerated people as veterans,” said Stewart, who has been incarcerated for 19 years. “We must change that paradigm. We must show we can be better than our mistakes.” (“‘We Can Be Better Than Our Mistakes’” VFW, 8/27/24, https://www.vfw.org/media-and-events/latest-releases/archives/2024/8/we-can-be-better-than-our-mistakes) The VFW even ranked Post 12226 among the best in the nation; they even held successful fundraisers within prison walls. 

Enter Richard Hy, a controversial and corrupt officer with the Buffalo PD. Hy, a 37-year-old detective with the Buffalo PD and an Army reservist who has completed two combat deployments. Though Hy has been banned by TikTok and blacklisted on Facebook, he runs the controversial YouTube channel Angry Cops in which he delivers military and law enforcement news through a barrage of shouted insults, crude humor, and belligerent mockery. 

A report from the NY Attorney General's Law Enforcement Misconduct Investigative Office from 2024 found that Hy “engaged in a pattern of misconduct of escalating encounters with civilians, including by using physical force, discourtesy, and unprofessional conduct” and suggested that the Buffalo PD should create a plan to monitor Hy's conduct and impose consequences for any future misconduct. Hy was guilty of misconduct when he intentionally backed his patrol car into a motorcycle, knocking over the bike and the driver, the attorney general found.  He was discourteous and used excessive force when, while responding to an armed robbery report, he cursed at a 14-year-old suspect, calling him “fat boy,” then shoved him and pushed him against a patrol car.  And he violated the department’s professional standards when he berated then-state Supreme Court Judge Mark Grisanti, whose long-running feud with his North Buffalo neighbors had turned into a street brawl, according to the report. (See: https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/2024-12/755b-findings-r-hy-bpd.pdf) He received a mere lecture and loss of 15 days of vacation time. Hy claims, however, that he’s lost promotions due to his controversial social media channel, and rightfully so.

In September. 2024, Hy posted a 17-minute video about Post 12226 on YouTube. “The VFW is hurting for members so bad that they’re going to prison in order to recruit veterans,” an unshaven Hy yells into the camera. “It’s not hard to be involved in a little bit of controversy when the people in the VFW post in prison are convicted murderers, rapists, and pedos!” Hy showed mug shots of Stewart and other Post 12226 members. He described their crimes. He made fun of the post’s fundraising efforts. “I don’t know how much money they’re fundraising,” Hy says in his video. “We getting an extra bag of Cheetos from the commissary and giving them to kids? … And what community are they outreaching to? They’re literally locked up. Their community is a community of felons, murderers. What are we doing here?” Hy ended with a call to action: “If I happened to be a post commander of a VFW somewhere, I think I would raise hell and say these sycophants don’t represent me, and we don’t want them in our brotherhood.” He included a link for viewers to contact the VFW. The video got more than 250,000 views and 17,000 likes. Over 1,700 YouTube comments piled up. “The only VFW these things should belong to,” one user wrote, “is Veterans For the Woodchipper.” (Source: “Everyone Loved a Colorado Prison’s VFW Post—Until a Popular YouTuber Heard About It” 5280.com, Apr. 2025. https://www.5280.com/everyone-loved-a-colorado-prisons-vfw-post-until-a-popular-youtuber-heard-about-it/)

Unfortunately, this Joe Rogan wannabe succeeded in getting this pilot program shut down. Buffalo PD refuses to properly discipline a rogue cop who bullied a program in another state to help prisoners do even something small to make amends for their past actions. It seems counterintuitive to me. While his last name may be Hy, Richard’s actions are very low. 

Law & Order: Low IQ