All right, guys. Welcome back to the channel and the next video in the series of why did I win my case against the city and get my job back? Why did the arbitrator agree with me saying that the city illegally terminated me and did not have just cause for termination? Um why why did that happen? Uh, today's video is going to be interesting and I'm I'm trying to find a way to do this delicately, but I don't quite know how because today we're going to be talking about Columbus Chief of Police Elaine Bryant and how when she was testifying in the arbitration hearing trying to justify my termination, she completely embarrassed herself. Uh, she embarrassed herself, she embarrassed the division of police, and she embarrassed the city of Columbus. Uh, how did she do this? uh she went up there on the stand and testified under oath that she doesn't know the division directives. And if you don't want to believe me and take my word for it, take the word of one of the city attorneys. This is uh city attorney Paul Barnhart. Uh I think you call him assistant city attorney. I don't know how that stuff works. He's he's one of the underlings of the city attorney's office and he's the one that had to represent the city in this case. You go to the hearing, everybody gives their testimony. After the testimony, attorneys for both sides will write a case brief. Uh so the city's case brief is trying to say, "Look, we proved our point at the hearing and here are the reasons why." My attorney fills out his case brief. He says, "We proved our point at the hearing and here are the reasons why." So, the city attorney while trying to prove the fact that they they demonstrate the fact that they proved their case, that's a better way of saying that, he actually addressed the fact that during the hearing, the chief of police admitted she didn't understand the rules and directives of the Columbus Division Police. So, I'm going to read that there and then we're going to get back into how exactly this came to be. Uh, so in his case brief, him trying to justify my termination, he had to make an excuse for the chief not knowing the rules. said, "Admittedly, Chief Bryant is less familiar with the nuances of CPD directives as she as chief of police oversees the entire operation of the division of police." Uh, then he goes on to say, "Her understanding of division directives, while important, perhaps is less expected than that of a patrol officer. The grievant admitted he is required to know and understand CPD rules and directives." So, here you have one of the assistant city attorneys for the city of Columbus trying to justify my termination by saying, "Listen, he is responsible for knowing the division rules and directives. He said that he accidentally violated policy, but that is no excuse." And in the same paragraph, literally the same paragraph, he is making an excuse for the chief not knowing the same directives that they're trying to terminate me for. Like let that sink in for a minute. The chief of police who actually is the one that is writing these directives. She has to sign off on every single one of these directives before they become kind of law for the division of police. She is the one that signs off on these things. She doesn't even know what is in them. But I'm expected to know them. And if I don't know them perfectly 100%, you know, at a moment's notice, then I should be terminated. That's the argument that the city attorney's office was trying to make. And that's absolutely embarrassing. Uh when we got to this moment in the hearing, this was the moment where I knew for a fact that the city had just proved my point that they terminated me in retaliation for my first amendment activity that had nothing do to do with this investigation or my particular violation of policy. Um they they proved my point. I knew that I had won my case at that point in time. Um, and I knew ah there there might be some other civil stuff going on down the road and they might have actually um proved that case already as well. So, how did we get to that point in the hearing? Because it was bonkers. Um, I can tell you that this is a moment where we're watching. Now, remind you, I guess you guys don't really know how this stuff all went down, but you go to the hearing and the first day of the hearing was the city's turn. They called all their own witnesses and the chief of police was a witness for the city. She goes up there and tries to say why they had to terminate me. And then my attorney gets an opportunity to cross-examine her. Uh when he's cross-examining her, he's trying to um I don't know, figure out what her justification for terminating me was. When when he got to the point where well, I I'll just get into his his line of questioning. So, um, you know, the directive that I violated is, I believe it's 11.07. I've seen it in writing about a billion times by now. Uh, 11.07 is the body camera directive. There's a lot of things in that directive, and there's one line in there that says, "Shall not download to a personal device." But there's a lot of other stuff in that directive that that actually led me to believe I was allowed to download this stuff at home. I just made a mistake and I didn't see that one line. um meaning uh we're allowed to watch these videos from home. I'm allowed to bring these videos home. I'm allowed to possess these videos. All of that stuff. Um that's all in that directive. So my attorney was trying to kind of make that case or trying to get the chief's feelings on that kind of thing. He said, "Chief, uh you're familiar with the division directives?" She says, "Yes, I am." "Are you familiar with the division directive 11.07?" She says, "Yes, I am." He then says, 'You know, you're the one that um writes these directives and signs off on them that uh before they ever ever enacted, so you read them before the officers ever get them. She says, 'Yes, I do. Goes then he goes then moves on. He says, "Okay, so 11.07, that is the body camera directive, right?" And she says, "Yes." And then he says, "Okay, according to 11.07, 07 at the time that officer Badger violated the policy. Um, were officers allowed to watch body camera footage from home from a personal device? And her response was something like, um, the directive says what the directive says. He goes, "Well, I didn't ask you that. I asked you specifically, were officers allowed to watch these videos from home." And you could see her kind of stumbling. He said, "Do you you know the directives, right?" And she says, "Yes, I do." Then why can't you answer the question? She went back and forth a little bit. She finally had to admit, I don't I don't know the directive. I don't know if it says that or not, which was her admission that that she didn't know the directives. Now, it's important for a large variety of reasons, but this is the part that really irritates me um because, you know, and I'm not going to go through the entire investigation again, but when I was called in and I was asked, um, you know, did you know that you weren't allowed to watch or to download these videos to a personal device? My answer was, you know, at the time I did not know that. But when I was brought up under investigation, I returned to the directives. I looked at it and there it was in black and white. I don't know how I made such a mistake. You know, I I admitted my mistake and I I apologized for my mistake and I moved on for it. But the second that I was put on notice, I went back and I read the directives. This was a hearing on my termination where the city had to justify firing me for violating these division directives. There's two documents that the chief should have brushed up on prior to going to that hearing. One is the division directive. Specifically, the directive that I violated. She should know that thing at least at a 10,000 foot understanding of that directive, which she proved she didn't. The other thing was that she proved that she didn't even know what was in the investigation that the city used to terminate me. I I'm not even convinced that she ever even read the document. Moving on from that, you know, I think my attorney very quickly said, "Okay, we've already established that. Let's move on." Uh he then said, "Um, prior to deciding on termination for Officer Badger, did you look at any comparable discipline cases?" She said, "Yes, I did." And he said, "Uh, okay. What cases did you look at?" She said, "I looked at some." He goes, "I didn't ask you if you looked at some. You already established that. I want to know which comparable discipline cases did you look at? Which cases did you find that justify termination for Officer Badger?" And once again, she was unable to answer that question. and she she couldn't give him a single specific case that she looked at that would justify terminating me. Uh he then went through some comparable cases that he found and some of them that were actually provided to him by the discipline grievance office which is the chief's office. Um he started asking her questions. Okay, what about this case? This is a case where an officer did X and he got a 24-hour suspension. Is what officer Badger did more serious or less serious than what this officer did who got a 24-hour suspension rather than termination. And she was saying her answers were like, "I don't know. I can't answer that." What do you mean you can't answer that? If if you believe that Officer Badger needed to be terminated, and here's another guy that did something that didn't get terminated, you must believe that what Officer Badger did was more serious. Uh some of the examples were one of them was a guy that got a [ __ ] on duty from his ride along and got a couple days suspension. He asked her, "Is what's more serious? Getting a [ __ ] from your ride along and allowing her to see uh CPD computer systems or officer Badger downloading public records from home making a mistake not reading the directives." She couldn't answer which one of those was more serious. Well, if you can't answer, then you must give punishment that is in line with the other guy. And if the other guy that got a [ __ ] on duty got a 24 or 32-hour suspension, not termination, you can't possibly justify terminating me. As this went on, she got more and more frustrated. That's when she actually had an emotional outburst in the courtroom. Uh courtroom, I say courtroom, it was just a classroom, but it was set up like a courtroom. That's when she looks directly at me. She goes, "I don't know, Officer Badger. How did you even find out about the woman eating mud? How did you even find out about that video?" Then she said, "Why do I have an officer with Oh, no. She she said two things. She said, "Why do I have an officer running around using his body camera to post videos on social media?" And then she also said, "What you're doing is you're posting videos of people having drug overdoses and mental health health crises. You're damaging the division of police." Now, she wasn't supposed to address me during the hearing. She's supposed to be answering my attorney's questions. Uh what she did was she tried to shift focus from her because she knew that she was failing miserably and embarrassing herself in the city of Columbus. She's trying to shift the focus over to me by by trying to make me look bad in one way or another. My my attorney didn't skip a beat and uh he actually going to get this next slide set up. He actually said, "Oh, um you're saying that he was making the division look bad by posting public records online. Is that part of the investigation?" and she said, "Yes, it was part of the investigation." That's when he he says, "Okay, do you mind turning to the page in the investigation where it says anything like that?" Because I don't recall seeing that in the investigation. And it just I can prove the fact that she didn't read the directives and she didn't read the investigation because I've got this other page up here. Give me one second to transition. This one, uh, these are quotes taken directly from the investigation. If she had read the investigation, she would have known this. Um the the first thing was, you know, that everything I posted was a public record. Nothing would have required redactions, restrictions, anything like that. I didn't post anything on the internet that would have been illegal content for me to post. Um that was the first thing that I pulled out of that investigation. The second thing is the part that we're actually talking about here. um when this happened to me or when I did this or when the it was revealed that I had violated policy, the city of Columbus knew, they're like, "You know what? We got him. This is our opportunity to shut this [ __ ] down. That is 100% how I believe this all happened." Uh they said, "You know, we thought we were going to get him for something else, but we got this. This is a slam dunk. We're going to fire him for this. Not only are we going to fire him from this, but we're going to criminally prosecute him." him. So, they went to the prosecutor's office. They spent three months trying to convince a prosecutor to charge me with 17 felonies. That's what they were trying to do to me. They wanted to not only did they want to fire me, but they wanted to ruin my life, ruin my ability to make a living, make sure that I could never be a police officer again. That was the level of hate and animosity that these people had for me simply for showing videos of the Columbus Division of Police. The majority of which show Columbus police officers doing a fantastic job being incredibly nice and compassionate towards the public. But the fact that I've spoken out against the mayor and the city administration on a couple of times, they were going to completely overlook all of the good I've ever done and just focus on that, focus all of their hate on me, and try to put me in jail. That's what they were trying to do. But here's a quote from the prosecutor. You can see it's in bold. Says, uh, the prosecutor deemed this case not to be reasonably prosecutable. This is based on the fact that officer Badger is permitted to view videos on a personal device, which is not a violation of policy. He can download videos to a personal computer or to a division of computer per policy. Had Officer Badger downloaded these videos to a division computer on an external drive, then viewed them on a personal device, no violation would have occurred. Sorry, I'm not feeling great. I got some tea here. So, one of our explanations for my case was that, you know, I was allowed to download these videos. If I downloaded them at work and brought them home, I wouldn't violated policy. The only part of the policy I violated was I was actually at home the moment I downloaded them. Uh they were trying to charge me with a felony based on a technicality, a very small part of the policy. But if the chief had actually read this investigation when my attorney asked her, "Are these officers allowed to view these videos from home?" she would have said, "Yes, officers are allowed to view these videos from home." But she couldn't because she didn't read this investigation. She didn't know what was in the division directives. Not only did she not know what was in the directives and not know what was in this investigation, but she was prepped for this hearing. Um, she was told what to expect going into this hearing. She knew what my defense was going to be. Um, she couldn't be bothered to to to take a moment and prepare herself for this hearing. That's the kind of person that Chief of Police Elaine Bryan is. She couldn't take five minutes to read through the directive and read through the investigation prior to going up and testifying on that. She also couldn't just take a moment that says, "Hey, you know what? Um, attorney, uh, give me a moment to refresh my memory with this case." This, as a police officer, this is something that we're taught to do. Uh, testifying in an arbitration hearing is no different than testifying in a criminal case. You know, I might get called to a uh a criminal case and go up on the stand and say, "Officer Badger, did you arrest this person?" "Yes, I did." "Uh, in your investigation report, you said, you know, yada yada yada. Do you recall that?" I'm like, "No, I I don't." Like, would you like a moment to refer to your your paperwork? You know, I would like a moment to refer to my paperwork or, you know, vice versa. Hey, what was the uh what was the defendant doing at this point in time? You know, I don't remember. Do you mind if I take a moment to refer to my paperwork? you refer the paperwork and you say, "Oh, here it is on page seven." Boom. That's what we got. Chief wasn't even able to do that. Um, this was the moment in my hearing that it became uh abundantly clear that my termination had nothing to do with the actual investigation, that this was retaliation. Um, I I don't know how else to say it. the the fact and I'll pull up this other this other image right here. The fact that the city attorney's position was that we must fire a police officer for not knowing the rules but make an excuse for the chief of police not knowing the rules is absolutely incomprehensible. Um I couldn't believe when this happened. Nobody in the room could believe what happened when this happened. Uh, I was sitting directly across from everyone everyone in the city and you could just see their heads just drop uh when the chief got called out for not knowing what she was doing. And you could also feel the energy on my side of the room with everybody trying not to burst out laughing. Um, I really would, you know, there's a part of me that wants to take a moment to like laugh and gloat about this this situation, proving that the chief doesn't know what she's doing. Um, but honestly, I'm I'm kind of sad about it. Uh, it's really sad what's happening in the city of Columbus that the citizens and the officers are being put in this position with somebody that can't even be bothered to read the rules or read an investigation on an officer whose life she is trying to ruin. Um, I don't know. that that was a very major part of my hearing and I can't possibly let that go without making it public. So now it's public. Thanks for watching. I'll talk to you later.