All >> [music] [music] >> right, guys. So, this is going to be one of the most disorganized videos I think I've ever done. I'm going to do this pretty much off the cuff because I'm a little bit short on time. Sorry, I've got cell phone cords getting in my way here. I'm a little bit short on time. I haven't had time to get into the studio to record anything for you, but I have some news that I have to share. Uh, I think everybody by now should have seen that I was reinstated back to the police department. So, I have my job back. I actually started back to work on Wednesday, uh, October 29th, I believe, was the date. So, I want to talk a little bit about that during this video. Um, I want to talk a little bit about, uh, monetization of the channel. I have to put some updates about that. And then I also want to talk about future content. So, stay tuned. Uh if that's the kind of stuff you're interested, that's why you're here, stay tuned kind of towards the end. Uh the first part, back to work. Yes. Uh if you if you saw my short video or you saw some of my announcements, it's true. Uh the arbitrator ruled in my favor. Uh my termination was overturned. I have been ordered to return back to work. They told the city of Columbus that they had uh 7 days to return me back to work. It only took them two days. I found out on Monday. Then on Tuesday, I was officially notified that I would rep be reporting to the police academy on Wednesday morning at 7 a.m. Also told me who I was going to meet with and all that other stuff. I posted that on social media. A lot of people were confused. Why do you have to go back to the academy? They thought that I had to go through the academy. They had to go get tased and maca and go running and all that kind of stuff. No. Uh I just have to go back to the academy to catch up on all of my annual certifications that I missed while I was gone. we have uh firearms qualifications. I went and did that Wednesday morning at like 8:30 in the morning. It was one of the very first things I did. I walked in uh they gave me my badge back, told me, "Go to the range, get your gun." My gun was still in the box that they that it was in when they took it from me originally. It had my name and badge on it. Got my name my my original badge number back as well. So, I went to the range, qualified with my my pistol, uh the shotgun, and with Mace. So, I'm up to date on all of those certifications. Then we drove around the city. Um, picked up uh uniforms that I need that I needed to get issued because they weren't issued to me last year. Um, let them know about some of the things that we need to order like a new vest cover, stuff like that. Uh, went out to the radio room, got a new radio. Well, actually got my original radio back because one of the guys out there was nice enough to uh put a sticky note on it and set it aside. So, he saved my Walke for me. So, I got the same Walke back. Um, then we went up to headquarters. Had to get keys issued to me again. Got a body camera reissued to me. Trying to think. And then, um, went back, we went had lunch, and then we went back to the academy. I got my my riot gear, got my gas mask, all my PPE gear, all of that stuff. All of that stuff has been issued to me that was issued to me out of the academy. The other thing that I have to do is there's a whole bunch of like legal updates, um, updates to directives, um, annual policy statements that you're supposed to read and sign off on, all of that stuff. You know, we're 11 months into the year. It's October 31st at this point. It's Halloween. That's why I'm wearing my Halloween shirt. Um, there's a lot of training that I've missed out on in the last eight months or so, seven months. So, I got to sit at a computer and log in and do a lot of online training. The other thing is that when they terminated me, they deactivated all of my profiles. All of those profiles need to be brought back to life before I can go back to the street. Uh, some of those profiles, as in today, which is my third day back to work, have not yet been properly activated. So, I spent the day today doing a lot of Power DMS training. That's the program we use to do our online training. I watched a ton of videos, all of that stuff today. Hopefully on Monday, whatever, November 3rd, I think it is, when I get back to work, uh, I'll be able to knock out my lead certification and, um, any other like online stuff that I have to do. My email should be reactivated. Then potentially Tuesday, November 4th, I I anticipate sometime next week, I'll head back to my regular precinct and I'll get in a cruiser and I'll get to go be the police again. So, that is the uh the quick and dirty update as far as that stuff is going. Uh how's it feel to be back to work? I get that question a lot. It feels great. It really does. Feels amazing. Uh I I no longer have this black cloud hanging over my head. Um I'm not dealing with the stress of not knowing what tomorrow brings. All of that stuff. Uh it feels incredible. Uh for the last 18 months or so, uh my life has been pretty difficult and pretty stressful. You know, um I was originally pulled off the street, told that I was under investigation. They refused to tell me what I was under investigation for. They just told me, "You go sit up in headquarters, sit there, be quiet, do what you're told to do, and we'll get back to you." Finally, after a few months, I found out what I was under investigation for. Then I got to go have a chief's hearing. There's a lot of stress involved with that. the street the chief's hearing. I was told, "Hey, you're not up for termination. We're going to get you back to the street as soon as possible." I had my my chief's hearing and then the next thing I hear is, "Hey, by the way, you've been terminated." Um, go to the safety director's hearing and and all the prep and then prepping for the uh arbitration hearing and all that stuff. Trying to work on, you know, editing videos for YouTube, for Facebook, for Instagram, for Twitter. Um, I'm uploading videos everywhere, doing long- form videos, short form videos, trying to manage content, uh, trying to get things monetized so I can afford to make a living, all that stuff. It's been a very stressful time. Um, and then also, no matter how many times I told people that I'm 100% confident that I'll be getting my job back, there's still that portion of the population that refuses to believe you. And I understand why those people refuse to believe you because, you know, I I've seen the same thing from so many other people. I've talked to cops that tell me their story and they tell me that they were screwed over and railroaded by administration. Then when I begin looking into it, they weren't railroaded by anybody but themselves. Um I I've arrested people on the street thousands and thousands of times. They all tell me that they didn't do anything, even though I know damn well they did what they did. So there was always, no matter how confident I was or I told people the truth about what was going on, a certain number of people that weren't going to believe what I had to say. And I always had that in the back of my mind when I was talking to people. Like, you know, am I talking to these people? Are they actually going to believe what I'm saying? So there was a lot of stress involved with that. Just a kind of a black cloud over my head that in that entire time. Uh that is gone now. I I it feels incredible. I've got my gun back. I got my badge back. I've got all of my ID cards work to get around headquarters, to get around the academy. I can go to the academy gym again. All that stuff is amazing. Uh, one of the other things that's been happening is, uh, people come to see me. It's been it's been really nice. A lot of people have come to see me. I'm sitting in an office at the academy and, uh, people find out where that office is. There's been a string of people coming to visit me, shake my hand, give me a hug, welcome me back. Um, that has been awesome. Every single person at the division of police that I have spoken to so far has been amazing, has welcomed me back. Um, it's been great. And I I don't want to name drop or anything because I don't want the city to target people that might look at me favorably. So, I don't want to talk about their ranks and and things like that, but there there hasn't been a single person that I've had a negative encounter with. and I've talked to some people um at some very high ranks on the department. Everybody that I've spoken to has been genuinely happy to see me back and has been adamant that if they have anything to do about it, um they want to make sure that I'm not constantly looking over my shoulder worried about what that next investigation is going to be. Um I've spoken to multiple people in my chain of command going very high up in my chain of command that have assured me that um that they're happy to have me back. They just it makes me feel good. Um I can't be I just I can't express how good it feels to be to be back and the way I've been received um back if if I if that's an answer to that question. [gasps] I have to hurry up because I can hear my wife and kids just got home and we're going to go out for pizza tonight. Um the the last thing that I want to get at before I forget is uh the monetization stuff. If you haven't noticed, I've deactivated the monetization side of YouTube. So, if you were a channel member, you're no longer a channel member. Uh if I don't I don't Well, the ads that pop up on videos, they pop up whether I'm monetized or not. So, I don't have any control over that. But the channel is not monetized. You also can't send uh super chats anymore. You can't send me gifts of money through YouTube, anything like that. There is no monetization. I wanted to make sure that I made that clear. Um, the other thing is uh my PayPal donations. A lot of people um donated to me through PayP I think I had on average about 50 donations come through a month. Um anywhere from $5 to $50. Uh I really appreciate everybody that took the time to make those donations, especially the people that did the reoccurring donations. Um you gave me a certain amount of stability. Like I knew at the at the beginning of each month I had a specific amount of dollars that I could spend to feed my family and if I made more like if a video did really well or something like that then that just meant I had a little bit more cushion or I could take that extra money and use it to pay down the credit cards and stuff that I've had to run up a little bit during this process. Um, but all of you guys that did those automatic uh re redonations or whatever you call it, the monthly donations on um, PayPal, I through my end through the web page, I don't have a way of stopping those. I don't have a way to kill the link that I originally posted on YouTube. Um, that is in the video description of probably 50 or 60 videos. Um, I can go through manually and remove that from the internet. It's going to take me some time, but I can do that. But in the meantime, u I still need the people that have those monthly um reoccurring donations. I need you to try to stop that if you can. um in the be if you don't get a chance to stop that and donations come through, every donation that came through from the day that I got rehired um going forward, I'm going to manually refund those donations. I just want to kind of put that out there until I'm no longer getting donations. If I can find a way just to close the account, I will. Um, but unfortunately I was using that for some other things. Like I was using that to pay my uh the bill that I have for my editing software and uh the bill that I use for my Dropbox and some other things. I'm going to have to transition those bills to um a credit card or something. And then I can shut down that account if I can't get the automatic reoccurring donations to stop. It'd be a lot easier if you guys could just do that for me. Um if you don't, I'll take care of it. I think that was all the housekeeping stuff that I wanted to say in this video. Uh, I'm sorry that I'm so scatterbrained. It's just I wanted to get something out to you guys as quick as possible and I didn't want to waste time sitting down writing an outline or a script or anything like that. I just wanted to spend some time talking to you, get my thoughts out there. Those are going to be my thoughts for today. Oh, also, um, a word on future content. It's going to be slow for a little while. Um, you know, I'm I'm back to work. I'm working my butt off and then I'm coming home having time with my kids. Uh got a lot of adjustments to make and uh I don't have the time for the editing right now. Um when I did all this before, I was working basically two full-time jobs. Um then when I lost my job and I was a full-time YouTuber, I kind of developed a little bit of a rhythm. You know, I knew when to come down to the computer, I knew how long things were going to take. Um I could kind of spread things out. Uh, now that I'm back to work, I have to try to get back into that rhythm of working a full-time job at at work and then coming home and working a second full-time job. Um, I'm not ready. I mean, I just got back to work. So, I kind of want to uh ease back into that schedule before I ease into before I get back into the uh, you know, working all day at work and then coming home and working all night and then also working on my weekends. Uh, I'm not going to do that for a little while. I'm kind of tired. I'm going to take a little bit of a break. So, the uh content is going to slow down considerably. I think I have um three or four videos that are they're planned um and already uploaded onto YouTube and I will put them out over time. Um in the meantime, just have a little patience with me. Um it might be a little while before we see new videos. Um might be the beginning of December. Um yeah, that sounds kind of accurate. uh maybe the beginning of December before I get a chance to sit down, start really cranking out content again. So, I think that's it. I think that's all I wanted to say today. Um, thanks for watching. Thank you for supporting me during this entire time. Uh, I can't say that enough. Uh, I don't even know how to put it into words uh how incredible this has been. Um, you know, I I was still under an immense amount of stress uh through this entire process, but it would have been so much more worse if it wasn't for you guys supporting the channel. Uh, people that paid for channel memberships, the people that sent super chats, and the people that p gave me PayPal donations, you guys particularly really helped out a lot. But not just that, all the other people that didn't have extra money to donate, but just spent time watching the videos, commenting on the videos, liking the videos, sharing the videos, that was honestly over half of my income was the ad revenue that I made through YouTube. So, you guys also did a uh a tremendous amount of work. Just watching the videos helped me out um considerably throughout this process. Um, it also, you know, having the videos, having YouTube and Instagram and Facebook and Twitter and all that stuff and editing a lot more video than I had ever edited before, um, it was tremendously beneficial to my mental health because even though technically I was unemployed, um, I still had a job to do. You know, I still got up at 6:00, helped get my wife and kids out of the house. I'd come down to the desk, I'd work a regular schedule. You know, I worked in the morning, I had lunch, took the dogs for a walk, and I'd come back down, work in the afternoon. I would cut off at like 4:00 or 5 in the afternoon, go to the gym, come home, have dinner. I mean, I had like a nice regular routine. I had [clears throat] deadlines that I had to work worry about. I had administrative stuff that I had to worry about. I was working a full-time job, you know, during this entire process. And that's that was my full-time job to try to create content for you guys to provide value for you that were helping pay my bills. Um, so it it was it really was beneficial to my mental health, if that makes any sense to you guys at all. I never felt like I was just out there stranded. Um, I always had something to do. Um, and I was doing it for you guys because you guys were helping pay my bills. I I hope you kind of see that in the relationship here. Um, it's it's crazy. [laughter] It's It's been a wild ride. It's been a wild ride and a really crazy year and a half for me. Um, I don't know. I just I hope you guys are enjoying it. Thanks for supporting me this far. I'm going to stop rambling now. I'll talk to you guys later.