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Buffalo is served by the Buffalo Police Department. The police commissioner is Byron Lockwood, who was appointed by Mayor Byron Brown in 2018. Although some criminal activity in the city remains higher than the national average, total crimes have decreased since the 1990s; one reason may be the gun buyback program implemented by the Brown administration in the mid-2000s. Before this, the city was part of the nationwide crack epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s and its accompanying record-high crime levels. In 2018, city police began wearing 300 body cameras. A 2021 Partnership for the Public Good report noted that the BPD, which had a 2020–21 budget of about $145.7 million, had an above-average police-to-citizen ratio of 28.9 officers per 10,000 residents in 2020 – higher than peer cities Minneapolis and Toledo, Ohio. The force had a roster of 740 officers during the year, about two-thirds of whom handled emergency requests, road patrol and other non-office assignments. The department has been criticized for misconduct and brutality, including the 2004 wrongful termination of officer Cariol Horne for opposing police brutality toward a suspect and a 2020 protest-shoving incident.
The Buffalo Fire Department and American Medical Response handle fire-protection and emergency medical services calls in the city. The fire department has about 710 firefighters and thirty-five stations, including twenty-three engine companies and twelve ladder companies. The department also operates the Edward M. Cotter, considered the world's oldest active fireboat.
With vacant and abandoned homes prone to arson, squatting, prostitution and other criminal activities, the fire and police department's resources were overburdened before the 2010s. Buffalo ranked second nationwide to St. Louis for vacant homes per capita in 2007, and the city began a five-year program to demolish five thousand vacant, damaged and abandoned homes. On May 14, 2022, there was a mass shooting in a Tops supermarket located in Buffalo where 13 victims were shot in a racially motivated attack by a white supremacist who was not a Buffalo native. Ten victims died and three were injured.
Buffalo's major daily newspaper is The Buffalo News. Established in 1880 as the Buffalo Evening News, the newspaper is estimated to have a daily circulation of 87,000 and 125,000 on Sundays. Other newspapers in the Buffalo area include The Public, the Black-focused Challenger Community News, The Record of Buffalo State College, The Spectrum of the University at Buffalo, and Buffalo Business First.