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"It made my family nervous for a while," Detective Gary Teague says of his police work, "but I reassure them that I'm trained at what I do, and my awareness is acute. I'm trained to use my instincts, and that keeps me safe."

Teague is a Detective in the Mobile Response Unit of the Buffalo Police Department and a member of the Police Hostage Team. His most notable case of late was last May's standoff on the I-190, when Teague stayed in constant contact with an armed man who held a hostage in his car, stopping traffic for nearly two hours. This month will mark Teague's 29th year in the police force.

Teague grew up in what he describes as a tough neighborhood in the Fillmore/Ferry area of the late 60's when political activism was high and the results were often misguided messages to "the establishment".

"I went to college as a political science major. I thought I'd go into…

Joy McDuffie is employed by the Western New York Law Center. She has a Master's in urban planning, and is on the Mayor's Anti-Flipping Task Force. Perhaps closest to her heart is her work with the Joint Schools Construction Board zones. She's done diligent work in mapping out neighborhoods in the area, and addressing the issue of abandoned housing in a study she's named Neighborhoods of Choice.

One would think that would be enough for one woman to take on, but now McDuffie is setting her sights on the school dropout rates and she has the ear of all the powers that be. As you'll see from her final answers, all of these projects interconnect. It is with great honor that Buffalo Rising introduces this Rising Star, giving her some respite from the nitty-gritty with the lighter fare of the BR questionnaire.

Q: Best thing to happen in Buffalo in past 20 years? A:…

Joseph Secchiaroli, guitarist & vocalist for THE REIGN OF KINDO, talks about his band’s exciting new project Rhythm, Chord & Melody, their genre-defying style, and how Buffalo’s weather inspires.

By Alison Zero, Talent Producer @ WBFO (wbfo.org/border)

Q: Your debut album, Rhythm, Chord & Melody, was just released on One Eleven Records. Has this record been in the works for some time? A: It's been almost two years. We started writing material under the moniker "The Reign of Kindo" in late 2006, almost immediately following the end of our old group, This Day & Age. We released an EP of five songs in August of 2007. Those five songs alongside some of the songs you will hear on Rhythm, Chord & Melody were originally meant to be on the same record. We couldn't finish all of the recordings in time to make the scheduled release dat…

It's that time of year again. Gathering school supplies, new school clothes, looking forward to seeing friends at school and making new friends. And for some kids, anticipating the school bully.

Some adults feel that bullying is an inevitable phase of growing up, but this is not your grandfather's bullying—to quote a popular saying. Technology has given birth to a new bully: The Cyber Bully. Cyberbullying is serious enough that the Center for Disease Control considers it an emerging public health issue.

Cyberbullying can involve sending mean, vulgar, or threatening messages or images over the Internet, or posting sensitive, private or false information about another person. The cyber bully might also pretend to be someone else in order to bully anonymously or intentionally exclude someone from a social group, online or at school.

Cyberbullying doesn't stop at the school…

"As a kid, I felt I needed to change the world from a global perspective," Buffalo Police Chief Donna Berry said. "But when I realized I couldn't change the world, I realized how important it is for each of us to change our own neighborhood."

If this is what Berry considers her task here on earth, one understands that she is never truly off duty. She belongs to a host of community endeavors, serving as board member and is also a member of her own block club. "You have to get your hands in the dishwater," Berry says of her community involvement. "You can't complain if you're not willing to work."

Some of her involvement has crossover with her day job, such as when she was on the board of the Massachusetts Avenue Project in its infancy and helped form policy for the organization—back when it was being designed to stem youth violence and before it blossomed into a green proje…

Although their name suggests otherwise, you might be surprised to find that the City of Buffalo Animal Shelter provides just as many services to Buffalo residents of the human variety as they do for the furry, four-legged kind. Along with their goals of providing "food, care, shelter and comfort to injured, abused, lost and abandoned animals," they also reunite families with their lost pets and adopt animals into loving, responsible homes, but their primary function is to provide Buffalo residents with the very important service of dog control.

"We're here to enforce ordinances of the City of Buffalo," the shelter's director, Kelly McCartney said. "Things like licenses, roaming at large, nuisance/quality of life issues like barking dogs, unwholesome conditions...we're here to serve the constituents of Buffalo."

Anibal Sepulveda, one of the shelter's Dog Control Officers, agre…