Federal prosecutors and agents have subpoenaed all Buffalo police records about the near-arrest of restaurateur Leonard Stokes, who was accused of possessing a stolen handicapped parking tag.

FBI agents went to Police Headquarters earlier this week to pick up the records after the U. S. attorneys office obtained a subpoena, law enforcement officials told The Buffalo News late Friday.

The News previously reported that the FBI was investigating a situation in which Stokes was spared arrest in January 2007 after he reportedly was caught with the stolen handicapped parking tag.

The tag was one of the hundreds reported stolen from City Hall.

A city parking enforcement employee noticed the stolen handicapped sticker on Stokes car, issued him a ticket, then contacted police.

Sources familiar with the incident claim that police handcuffed Stokes and intended to arrest him, but turned him loose after Stokes — at his insistence — was allowed to meet in City Hall with Mayor Byron W. Brown.

The mayor repeatedly has said that nothing improper occurred, but never has detailed publicly what happened that day.

The mayor, however, has insisted that Stokes wasnt treated any differently than the 14 others picked up with stolen parking tags. Each was ticketed by the Parking Violations Bureau.

But none of the others was brought to the mayors office.

Law enforcement sources familiar with the incident have told The Buffalo News that police had intended to arrest Stokes, the first person caught with one of the stolen handicapped tags, because he was unrepentant and uncooperative with officers.

After being taken into custody, Stokes told police he had purchased the tag from a man in the Walden Galleria. Stokes also told police he wanted to talk to Brown, then, using his cell phone, called the mayor, sources told The News. Brown didnt answer, but Stokes left a message. A short time later, a deputy police commissioner instructed police not to arrest Stokes but to drop him off at the mayors office, the sources told The News.

A City Hall laborer subsequently was charged with stealing the tags and selling them from a city truck on the streets of Buffalo and at Gigis, his mothers restaurant on East Ferry Street.

U. S. Attorney Kathleen M. Mehltretter and Maureen Dempsey, an FBI spokeswoman, said they could not confirm or deny that the police records had been subpoenaed.

Michael T. DeGeorge, Buffalo police spokesman, and Diane T. OGorman, a city attorney who is counsel to the Police Department, could not be reached to comment.

The FBI also is investigating Stokes in connection with One Sunset, a Delaware Avenue restaurant that received $160,000 in public money and went out of business last year.

FBI agents and federal prosecutors subpoenaed city records on the One Sunset project more than a month ago.

"I have no comment," Herbert L. Greenman, Stokes attorney, said late Friday.