All right, guys. This is a video that I've been wanting to show you guys for a very long time. As a matter of fact, the video that you're going to be watching today is one I recorded a little over five months ago. I recorded all the way back in March, shortly after I was terminated. Uh, this is the video that I made where I went into great detail talking about the investigation that the city of Columbus used to justify terminating me. Um, I made this video originally and I sent it off to my attorney and handful of other people for review. And my attorney specifically asked me not to release this video because we had not yet scheduled our our hearing with the arbitrator. uh we obviously hadn't had the arbitration hearing yet and there were still a lot of moving pieces of parts and you know we're we're still kind of in a a very serious legal proceeding and you just don't want to be putting out uh public statements and videos and stuff during that time because you can kind of gum up the works uh for lack of a better term. So I've been holding on to this video. We had our arbitration hearing back in July July 22nd and 23rd. uh there's a kind of a cooling off period after the hearing where the attorneys for both sides get to put together something called a case brief. Uh they put together their case brief that uh is basically their version of how the hearing went. Uh they both sides are going to try to say that the other side did a a poor job of presenting the facts at the hearing. The arbitrator then takes the case briefs, takes all of his notes and everything from the hearing and uh will render his decision. Uh if I've released this video, then that means that the case briefs have already been turned in. Uh the timeline from here is supposed to be 30 days. So the arbitrator is supposed to look at everything. He has 30 days to render his decision. Um and at that point in time, I fully expect to be returning to work. Uh I will add one caveat to that that 30-day part is that uh the the arbitrator, if it gets bogged down, tied up, whatever, and needs a time extension, uh he can request one. I've been told this is very common. So, I don't expect this next phase to take 30 days, but I'm hoping it doesn't take much longer than 30 days. Um, but you know, this is a video that even though this process hasn't quite played all the way through yet, uh, it's one that I feel is very important to put out to the public, I want to put it out for you guys, um, kind of as a a thank you. Um, I've been wanting to put this out for a long time, uh, because I have a lot of people out there that are supporting me, um, you know, emotionally, spiritually, and also, um, and I don't know which one is most important, but financially. Uh, the financial support that I've gotten from you guys is, uh, I I I don't know how to quite put it into words. Uh, I can't thank you enough. Uh, my family has been, you know, we've had to adjust the budget. We've had to cut some some uh some costs and you know, we we haven't been able to do all of the things that we were doing when I was getting paid by the police department in the city of Columbus, but I haven't had to make any, you know, tremendous life changes. I had had to move out of my house. Haven't had to sell it in my cars. I've still been able to put food on the table and get clothes for my kids. They recently started back to school. We were able to afford all of their new clothes and all the things that we needed to do. And I I couldn't do that without the support from you guys. So, I've wanted to put this video out for a very long time. Uh I'm doing it at the uh at my earliest convenience. This is the first opportunity I've had to put this out for you guys so you can see what's actually going on with me. Um and you can kind of see why I feel very confident that uh the city's decision is going to get overturned. So, I think that's all I want to say about the introduction of this video. I already recorded like a 20 some minute video and I don't want to make this too long and boring. Um, but I appreciate your guys' support. I hope you enjoy the video. I'll talk to you guys soon. [Music] Okay, guys. So, this is the video that I'm making about the investigation done by the Columbus Division of Police that they used to justify my termination. A couple things that I want to make perfectly clear before we get into the meat and potatoes of this video is that uh one thing you'll find very soon on is that there are some policies of the Columbus Division of Police that I clearly violated. Uh, I'm I'm not disputing the fact that I violated policy. And from the minute I was asked during the investigation what was going on, I was upfront and honest about my my activities. I never tried to to hide my actions. I never tried to um cover them up or anything like that. I immediately took ownership of my mistakes and I was ready to take my discipline and move on. I don't really know what to say today to be honest with you. Um, when when I was finally given this packet and shown what I had done, I was embarrassed. I don't know what else there really is to say. This uh I I do really enjoy my job. I think uh Lean did a good job of laying that out there. I don't need to go any further into that. Uh but I do take full responsibility for what I've done. Um I just hope that everybody keeps in perspective um kind of just the whole picture here. That's that's all I'm asking for is uh you know a fair decision after this. Um because I I did everything with the best of intentions. I just didn't do the right thing and I apologize for that. Uh, at the end of the day, I'm human. We're all human. Humans are going to make mistakes. Humans are going to have errors of judgment. And that's exactly what happened here. Um, regardless of those facts, we don't fire police officers every time they violate a policy. We especially don't fire police officers for the policies I violated in the nature that I I I violated them. and not for an officer that has been on the department for 14 years, has a clean service record, has a good reputation with the officers and the public alike, as well as absolutely no discipline in my file. With all that being said, let's get into the investigation itself. And I want to start with some of the stuff that you might have been seeing in the media because it's a little bit misleading. Uh I'm not blaming the media for misleading headlines or anything like that. Uh there's a reason for that. Um for one, they don't necessarily always understand what it is that they're reading when they look at these investigations. The other thing is that uh they can only use so many words in an article because people's attention spans are so short that they won't read the entire thing. So they have to put stuff out there that's going to grab people's eyes, get people to click. That's how they make their money. It is what it is. It's a consequence of the world we live in today. So, the headline, and this has been posted just about everywhere, Columbus police officer fired after uploading bodywn camera footage to YouTube. Then over next to it, it has a quote from the safety director. Says, "Officer Badger admits to violating division policy on multiple occasions. He admits to improperly and repeatedly downloading law enforcement materials to a personal device." So, if you read the headline and then that quote from the safety director, you would be led to believe that I um violated division policy on multiple occasions, improperly, repeatedly downloaded law enforcement materials, and then uploaded those to YouTube. That's that's the message that they're trying to convey with a story like this. Uh that's not what the investigation found. The investigation actually found that I uploaded two videos. There was two videos on my YouTube channel that the investigation found I had downloaded materials and uploaded those to YouTube. I've been doing this for 5 years. I have over 670 videos on the channel at this point in time. The investigation found that of those 670 something videos, two of them contained material that I didn't get properly through public records. um this investig well and I've got the screenshots of the videos right here. One of them is this one here with a woman that was in the alley eating mud. Another one was a uh a video of officers stopping two young black men on the side of the road who both had firearms with them. And while they were being arrested, the guys were saying, "I didn't do nothing wrong. You guys are stopping us for no reason." Uh those were the videos that I posted on YouTube that contained information that uh I didn't get through proper channels. How did this investigation begin? Uh it began with this video right here. As a matter of fact, this is a screenshot of woman that was found in the uh in an alley rolling around in a mud puddle eating the mud. Um I requested this video. Well, let's let's get this is how the investigation started. So I posted this video. someone else in the world saw this video and uh sent a request for the same information. The public records unit looked through looked for this video and uh realized that they never released anything like this to the public. They then they knew that I'm the one that released the video. They went through my um history on the on the body camera system, found that I had downloaded this video and uploaded it to the internet and also found that I had downloaded 17 well a total of 17 videos and that's what we have here. That's what led to the investigation and these are the results of the investigation. Uh before I get into the the two YouTube videos that contained information I shouldn't have had, um I want to talk about how I came to download these videos because it's important and it it starts at the beginning with this one down here at the bottom that I downloaded on June the 16th, 2023. And the officer on it is Gary Orhood. Uh I don't want to get too deep into the weeds on this, but this is an incident where he was interviewing a suspect. I believe the interview was a couple hours. suspect had um admitted to breaking into a car, stealing guns, and I think gave some information about who they were committing their crimes with. Uh some of my buddies told me I should watch this video. I was at work. I attempted to watch the video. I kept getting called away on calls for service. So, I was unable to watch this 2-hour long video. I was unable to see the information that it contained. Um so, the next day, I was at home. I logged on to the body camera system from my home computer, which is something that we're allowed to do. and I was trying to watch this video. Uh, for one reason or another, my internet service was garbage that day. Um, I and it's been garbage for several months because of I think it's because of construction in my neighborhood, but that's besides the point. I had garbage internet. I couldn't watch this 2-hour long video. Uh, so, and I want to show you this is an example of what the Axon dashboard looks like when you're watching videos from home. Uh it's not exactly like this because this is an administrator page has a delete function. It has a reassign function. These are things that we can't necessarily do um as officers, but it's it's very similar to this. So I'm watching the video or attempting to watch the video. I can't get it to play and I I remember, you know what, everything we do on this system is logged, recorded, and stored somewhere. I know that everything I do on that system is being monitored. So I figured, you know what? I should be able to see who else has watched this video. Uh, I tried to pull up, I believe it was like this audit trail and for some reason it wasn't pulling up. Um, so I looked at everything else on the screen. I saw this download button and I thought, "Oh, I bet you I can download the audit trail to this video. I'll download it. I'll see who has watched this video and then I'll go talk to them and get the information from them." So I hit download. I went upstairs to grab a cup of coffee because my internet was slow. When I came back down, I opened the file. Turns out I had actually downloaded um the actual video, this actual video down here, I had downloaded it. Um I didn't know that we had the ability to download these videos. I I I didn't know we were allowed to do that. I thought that if we weren't allowed to download these videos, then this little button at the top of the screen would not have been included. It would have been deactivated or something like that. So, I thought about it logically and I said, "You know what? We're allowed to watch these videos at home." Um, we're allowed to have all kinds of material, law enforcement related material in our homes, in our gym bags, in our vehicles, all that kind of stuff. We do that stuff all the time. So, I I figured, you know, they must allow us to download these videos because we're allowed to have them. So, I watched the video that I downloaded. And then there were other times in the future where I was trying to watch a video and um my internet wasn't working. So I knew that I could I could just download the video and watch it. That's what I did. At the time I didn't realize that there was any policy against downloading those videos. Um when I was brought up under investigation, I went back and read it and there it was clear as day. It says do not download to a personal device. That was my mistake. Um it as it turns out, we are allowed to download these videos. we're just not allowed to download them to our personal computers. Uh something else that is uh that's interesting that this investigation found that I want to tell you guys about was from the jump the moment that I became that I became the subject of an investigation. Uh the chain of command, the upper echelon of the chain of command, meaning the chief's office, they knew for a fact that they were going to use this investigation to terminate me. Uh, one of the first steps that they did is they went to the prosecutor's office and tried to get the prosecutor to charge me with misuse of a computer device. They wanted me criminally charged so that they could use that to justify terminating me. Uh, this is what the prosecutor had to say about this. He says it is not reasonably prosecutable. This is based on the fact that officer Badger is permitted to view videos on his personal device, which is not a violation of policy, and can download the videos on a division computer per policy. Had Officer Badger downloaded these videos to a division computer on an external drive and then viewed them on a personal device, no violation would have occurred. So, my mistake here was that I didn't think ahead, download these videos when I was at work, and then come home and watch them. That's the only difference between what I did. I'm allowed to download these videos. I'm allowed to possess these videos. I just wasn't allowed to download them from home. I I guess I understand why that policy is there, but there's some holes in it, and it's it's frustrating. But that's the crux of their investigation. Uh, the other thing that was found during the investigation is they went to the office, the public records office, and they spoke to the manager down there. They said, you know what, of the videos that he posted for the world to see, um, were any of them, uh, private or were they all public records? And they said after reviewing the videos with the manager, uh, she stated that Officer Badger did not post anything in any of the videos that would be considered private or protected. So, I had videos that I was allowed to download, I just downloaded them at home instead of at work, and the videos that I posted to the internet were public records. But regardless of the fact, they determined that um what I did was a policy violation. Oh, and I I have to get to these ones here. I'm sorry, I got ahead of myself. Uh so, I had downloaded some videos that I was able to watch. I was allowed to watch, you know, all of that stuff from home. Let's get up here. I've got the investigation pulled up. Not this page, this one. Um, and here it is. So, I told you before that I had posted this video online. Somebody found out about it or somebody that saw it requested it and that's how I got into this situation. Uh it turns out that I had sent a records request for that incident and I sent it using the wrong incident number. Uh this one that ends in 479. That's what I typed in my records request. Uh but the actual incident ended in 476. So I transposed the nine in the six when I sent my records request. Uh they denied my records request. They said, "You know what? There is no records associated with this 479 incident. Um so we have nothing to send you." I went on the system. I looked at it. I found this video. This is just a screenshot of it, but I found this video and I looked at it and I said, "You know what? This is 100% a public record. There's no redactions that need to be made. There's no private or confidential information on it. Rather than send a new request, I'm going to save the guys in records some time. I'm just going to pull it and upload it myself." Um, clearly that was an error in judgment. That was a mistake on my part, but that was what was going on in my head at the time. I knew that everything I did on the system was recorded. I knew that they would be able to see that I did this, but I didn't think that it would be an issue. Um, that was an incredible lapse of judgment on my part, but that's there's there's no other explanation. That's exactly what I did. Uh this other one with Edward Chong, it's a similar story. This is what I said in my my IIA interviews and it's also what I told the chief. Uh this one I had requested. Um but I didn't request a a third officer. I requested two officers and there was a third officer that I wanted to get his perspective. I only wanted to use about 14 seconds of it. Again, I didn't want to waste the time up in the public records office. I thought that I was doing them a favor. So, I downloaded the video and I included it in a YouTube video that I uploaded to the world. Um, that's what I did. It was that's the reason I downloaded those videos and that's the reason that I put those particular ones up on the on the internet. Uh, I absolutely was not running my YouTube channel based on uh inappropriately obtained materials. Um, I I put things up twice that I shouldn't have put up. Um, but what that means, I'll pull up the investigation or actually the charges right here. Um, but I had violated policy nonetheless. So, that goes through the chain of command. The chain of command makes a recommendations for discipline. I can tell you that my uh sergeant recommended a DCC, which is low-level discipline, basically disappears after 9 months or something like that. My lieutenant said the same thing. They said, "Look, he's a good officer with a good reputation. Has no discipline in the discipline tracking system. Uh, he doesn't need to be hammered for this. He he acknowledged his mistake. He owned it. Um apologized for it. Let's all just move on. My commander uh recommended a deviation from progressive discipline. Recommended a written reprimand which stays in your file for two years. If you violate the same rule in two years, then you're subject to progressive discipline, which would mean days off. Uh that went through the entire chain of command up to the the chief. The chief said, "No, this is criminal critical misconduct. We're going to have a hearing." uh when you're going to have a hearing, there's a group of people that meet and they decide on what your we call it departmental charges. These are the rules that you've broken that you have to explain to the chief. Um those people are I believe it's the commander of the public accountability division, the deputy chief of the public accountability division, and then one of the assistant chiefs. So they get together and they said, "You know what? We're going to serve him with these charges. He's going to go speak before the chief of police." Um these are the charges. It was rule of conduct 103 and rule of conduct 136. 103 just says that as an officer of the division, you're required to follow all rules at all times. Uh 136 is known as conduct unbecoming. Basically, anytime that you're off duty and you violate a policy, they they charge you with conduct unbecoming. Uh the good news when I got these charges, you know, because I had been relieved of duty since May the 5th. I'd been relieved of duty for 9 months. Uh, at the time of my hearing, it was exactly 9 months. I had my gun and badge taken away from me. I was put in a little cubby hole and told, you know, you're in trouble. You're too dangerous to be out with the public. We're going to keep you in this hole. Um, the reason they do that is because you're considered a termination case. If you're up for termination, they don't let you work the street. When I was charged with rule of conduct 103 and 136, I realized I'm no longer a termination case. um after the hearing I should go back to work. They're not looking to fire me. And I can show you um that right here because this is what they charge you with if they're planning on firing you. They go ahead and hit you with a rule of conduct 104. And it says right there uh cause for dismissal. If you're curious, this particular set of departmental charges were the departmental charges that they served me with when they did investigation into my Instagram account and they decided that I was a termination case because of my first amendment activity on Instagram. Uh those were eventually all dismissed and I was left with this investigation. That last one lasted two years. This one lasted 10 months. Uh but regardless, they said, you know, not a termination case. You're looking at a suspension. Let's go to the chief's hearing and go from there. When you are about to have a chief's hearing, they they send you some comparable discipline cases. Uh that way you know kind of what you're going to expect when you leave the chief's office. Uh one of the comparable cases they sent me was a vice officer that posted some uh non-public information on his Facebook account. uh he was given a 24-hour leave forfeite. Um they also said they also said, you know, we're going to say that the policy that he ultimately violated was misuse of a law enforcement database. So they pulled up a bunch of relevant u misuse of law enforcement database cases. Got those up here. Uh they range from 88 hour suspensions, 40hour suspension, 24-hour suspensions, and it goes all the way down to this one. This was a uh believe he was a supervisor. He accessed our computer report system to look at a homicide report, took information from that homicide report and disseminated out to his uh personal family um because one of his family members was named in that report. He wanted his family to know what their family member was accused of so that they could make a determination on how are they going to treat that person in the future. the chain of command um reviewed what he did and after he spoke to them they said you know what you did the wrong thing but you did it for the right reason so we're going to downgrade this to a written reprimand uh the moral of the story is I went into the chief's office with the assumption that I was going to get anywhere between a written reprimand up to an 88 hour suspension possibly 120 hour suspension but regardless of that um termination was definitely not supposed to be on the table. So, I go to my chief's hearing. I told her almost exactly what I told you guys just a minute ago about how I came to download those videos and fact that it was only two YouTube videos that were identified in the investigation as things that I improperly uploaded. Um, the chief is supposed to take into account my work history, the fact that I have no discipline in my file, the fact that I have a good reputation on the the department, the fact that I have a good reputation with the community. um that I'm just a generally all-around a pretty good officer. Um we immediately after the chief's hearing started requesting that I get sent back to work and word got back to me that the chief was unwilling to talk to anybody about me. Uh she was unwilling to talk about sending me back to work. She was unwilling to have discussions with people about what type of discipline she was going to issue. Um, I firmly believe that at this point in time, the chief had already made up her mind that she was going to fire me even though termination was not on the table. So, had to wait about two and a half weeks and then someone comes into the office, grabs me and says, "Hey, you've been fired." Termination wasn't on the table. The leadership of the department, nobody recommended that I be terminated. And then all of a sudden one day the chief decides that I'm going to be fired. We looked at all the comps. We know how officers generally are treated under these circumstances for one reason or another, which we all kind of know what those reasons are. I was treated differently than everybody else. I was terminated for something that we don't terminate officers for. This isn't what you do to an officer that's been on your department for 14 years, has a good reputation with his fellow officers, and a good reputation with his citizens. Um, I don't know. I been instructed by my attorney not to say too much more. Uh, but we all have our thoughts. We all know what's really going on here. Um, I think that's all I'm going to say today. Thank you for watching. I'll talk to you soon. [Music] [Music]