[Music]
thank you
hey guys I wanted to hop on real quick
just to make an announcement the
announcement is that I'm gonna I'm
forced to take a little bit of time off
um the month of July there will be no
videos for you to watch I'm sorry for
that but the reason there will be no
videos for you to watch is because I
have no content to produce I don't have
any raw footage that I can edit and put
on YouTube for you the reason I don't
have any content for you is because well
if you look at the article that is
showing on the screen right now that is
your explanation it says Columbus Police
are months behind in public records
requests due to staffing issues the
city's Public Safety department says
there are seven full-time employees in
cpd's Public Records Office
by contrast Cincinnati has 34 full-time
employees
so what this is saying is that
the public records unit only has seven
people and they are unable to keep up
with the demand of all the public
records requests that are coming in I am
a very frequent customer of the public
records unit for the Columbus Division
of police obviously
and uh due to them being so far behind I
don't have any content that I can make
for you to put out on YouTube I'm hoping
that by taking the month of July off
they can fill a couple of my old
requests I think I still have one or two
from January if not early February that
I am waiting once I get those in I will
edit that content and I will schedule it
for release in August hopefully with
taking the month off I can get a little
bit ahead of the curve and I won't be so
reliant on them being timely with their
fulfillment of these requests until
something changes in that office until
the political powers that be do
something to spend the right amount of
money to get the right number of people
and make salary decisions commensurate
that people will actually want that job
until that happens
unfortunately I feel like this is
something that's going to happen more
and more commonly with this channel
so I just wanted to hop on real quick
let you know that they only have seven
people up there they're working as hard
as they possibly can and unfortunately
with them working as hard as they can in
the amount of overtime that they're
being forced to work it's still taking
them a long time to get through these
public records requests and before
people say you know that's their job and
they should be doing it I want to let
you know how
difficult some of these things can be
and I want to use myself as an example
as I am
potentially one of their biggest clients
um the you know I I consider myself part
of the media now and uh the demands of
the media on the public records unit are
strong so what I do is every single week
I submit a public records request and
each request I ask for five separate
police incidents
each of those incidents has multiple
officers
I request the 9-1-1 calls as well as
body camera footage and Cruiser footage
and helicopter footage if it's available
now if I request an incident that let's
make this easy for Math's sake it take
it was a one hour incident and there
were four officers involved in that
incident the employee of the public
records unit has to watch an hour-long
video for each of those four officers to
make appropriate redactions
if this body camera video contains
children that were victims of crime or
women who were domestic violence victims
or sexual assault victims or grotesque
injuries or you know personal
information nudity all of these things
have to be redacted from those videos
and that adds time so an hour-long video
that requires a bunch of redactions
might take two hours now if I requested
four officers
that one incident
might take eight hours for that employee
to do that means they spent an entire
day on one incident and I request five
of those at a time so there's potential
that just one of my requests might take
a one employee an entire week to fulfill
that request
it's a very demanding job at least it's
demanding of their time and the hours
that is why it is absolutely necessary
for the city to maybe follow
Cincinnati's example and it double
triple or even quadruple the size of
that office in order to fulfill its
function within the city
until that happens unfortunately I
believe these requests are going to
continue to take a long time
and I might have to take more and more
breaks going forward only time will tell
hopefully the city and the leaders of
the city are able to get their heads out
of their asses and do the right thing
and provide funding and energy towards
what the city needs to provide its most
basic functions to its citizens rather
than spending its time and energy on
things that will not have a benefit
for the citizens of the city and the
most pertinent example I can think of is
the office of violence prevention
you have
public records not being fulfilled in a
timely manner which is actually a
violation of law
and instead of putting time and effort
into solving that problem
the city the mayor city council is
putting its time and effort into things
that any intelligent person knows will
not have an impact on the city until
things like that change
we're gonna have to wait months and
months and months for public records
request to be fulfilled unless possibly
somebody files a federal lawsuit against
the city
if this continues for too long you might
be you might see my name on one of those
lawsuits who knows
but regardless taking the month of July
off thank you all for supporting the
channel I look forward to talking to you
again in August
take care
[Music]