Hey everyone, it's me, the owner and host of Arrest Cam and Arrest Cam Fish and Wildlife. If you're a father, happy Father's Day. I hope you're getting to spend time with your family. This is the first time you've seen me. So, before we get into the reason why I'm making this video, I just want to give you a little bit of an introduction to myself. I once trained to be a firefighter and EMT. I worked in two different counties over almost 3 years in Florida. And along the way, met a lot of great people, saved a couple lives, and had a lot of fun. It's a job that I miss every single day, and it was one that I had to give up when I was having a kid. At the time, I didn't have any family nearby, and working 24-hour schedules was proving to be very difficult. So, I started looking for something else. I looked online and I found a listing for boat insurance, specifically in claims. And I thought to myself, I like boats. I've been boating and fishing my entire life. So, I gave it a shot. Didn't really think much of it. and got hired. Over about a decade, I built an entire career there, working my way up to manager. By the time I left the company, I was managing a boat claims and towing unit, meaning that when anybody had to call in a claim because they damaged their boat or it was sinking, they talked to my team. If they needed a tow on the water, they were talking to my team as well. We also sold the towing membership. While working at that job was great. I decided maybe I should start a YouTube channel. I looked into police body camera footage, something I was always a fan of, and I wanted to make sure that I do it the right way. I've always requested the footage directly from law enforcement agencies, completed my own research, pulled my own court records, and did my own voiceovers. As that channel began to grow, I started a fish and wildlife channel, merging two things I enjoyed: body camera footage and fishing and hunting content. Knowing that the amount of requests would increase, I hired a close friend of mine to assist. He's a 1099 contractor and his sole job is researching and requesting records for these channels. Now, as you can imagine, the videos don't come over with a nice pretty bow on them. I have to do the editing. I do all of my own editing in Adobe Premiere Pro, turning what's typically between 2 hours and 27 hours into a video that's about 5 to 35 minutes. Now, depending on the law enforcement agency, looking at UFWC, some of them have terrible microphones. With FWC and even many other law enforcement agencies, I have to edit every single second of sound to make the decibb loud enough so that you can hear it. Some of it when you get it is basically a faint whisper, and I have to do multiple iterations of audio editing to even get the footage to a point that you can hear it. Since then, both channels have grown to nearly 200,000 subscribers with the Fish and Wildlife channel in over a dozen states. Now, this took a huge amount of effort as most states have different public record laws, different requesting systems, and many of them don't even have information online on where to start, but we were able to do it and we were able to grow the channel in doing that and provide new and unique content for you. We've averaged close to about $5,000 a month in video requests. The law enforcement agencies charge us what it costs them. If it takes them 10 hours to review and redact footage, they charge us 10 hours of labor at whatever their hourly rate is. This has always been something that we're happy to pay because this is how we bring content to you. Without paying for that, we would have no content. Back in January of this year, I decided to quit my regular job. At the time, I was basically working two full-time jobs. I was working a typical Monday through Friday schedule and in the evenings and on the weekends editing videos. That left very very little time to spend with my son and I wanted to change that. Since then, I've got to spend more time with my son and do things that I enjoy and even have a little bit of time to sleep. So, it's been great. Quitting that job I knew was a risk because I was putting myself basically at the mercy of YouTube. And that was something that was a little bit scary to me, but we've been doing it for years and we haven't had any issues. Well, last month without notice, YouTube suspended my regular rest channel. That notice came in at 4:55 in the morning. The reason YouTube gave us was reused content and a very broad and generic list of things that might be the problem. Some of the things included not enough commentary or videos other channels posted. This essentially put a 90-day pause on the channel where we're completely ineligible to make money on it. We were given the option to appeal the suspension and that's something I did right away. I spent about 6 hours that morning working on a video showing the entire process. In that appeal, I showed how we research court cases, how we request content, how we pay for the content, how I edit the content. I even showed the 1099 partially redacted of the individual who does most of the research on the front end to make this possible. I showed how I do my own voiceovers based on the court records and the outcome to educate the public. And I submitted that appeal. They say that the appeal is reviewed by an actual human, but the video shows zero views and it came in at 2 in the morning Eastern time. So, if it was a human, maybe they didn't watch the video, maybe they did and it doesn't trigger a view. I don't know, but I do know that it was rejected. To make matters worse, they demonetized the Fish and Wildlife channel as well as it's associated with that account. This basically means that all of the videos up right now generate zero revenue for myself, but the ads that continue to air go directly to YouTube. To make matters worse, they don't just take the money that you make during those 90 days. All of the money you made leading up to it, which for me was about a month and a half, is also taken away from you. for the fishing channel. I I don't know what's going to happen with the revenue from last month or the point leading up to this month when it also got suspended, but I'm assuming they're going to keep it. Well, what option do I have now? I have to wait 90 days, reapply, and hope that I'm accepted back into the YouTube program. So, before we get into what I'm going to try to do to fix this mess, I want to tell you what you can do to help out if you feel like it. Recently, I created a Patreon for the channel. It's $5 a month and we're going to try to include things like early access video footage for videos that we're going to release, albeit at a slower rate. And that $5 will go directly to helping us pay bills and hopefully contribute more towards future request. If you're not into a reoccurring membership or having to set up another account, I certainly understand. We're also setting up a Venmo and a cash app. Again, only give if you can, only give if you want to. It's no pressure, but it would really help us out. and I really appreciate all the support you all have given us along the way. We're going to have all those links down below. Be sure to check it out if you're interested. And if you're not, that's fine, too. It's your choice. We don't want to pressure anyone into doing anything. Now, here's what we're going to do to try to fix this mess. We weren't given any real advice from YouTube. The bulleted information was very broad and generic, and I think it's that way on purpose. During the process, we weren't given a human to speak to. We weren't given even someone to chat with or send emails to. it was the appeal and the appeal was rejected. Through their help support system, I managed to get a ticket going and talked to somebody through a chat who basically just copied and pasted everything we were already told. I asked for specifics as to what was wrong and they refused to provide me any granular information beyond what is already provided. So, you see these suspensions come from an AI program that automatically scans YouTube channels. Once it flags it, you're basically suspended. From there, you could submit the appeal that's reviewed by a human. I don't have any confidence, and I would love to just have a FaceTime call or some kind of face tof face with somebody, but that doesn't happen. So, we're basically putting in our trust that humans review these things. In the appeal, I told YouTube that we post the original body camera footage that's edited based on how we think it should be presented to the public, and dozens of other channels react to that video, causing it to appear multiple times on YouTube, but not from any ill will or ill intention by us. As far as I know, all of the channels reacting to our content are still monetized. This basically means that YouTube is rewarding somebody for watching a 20inute video on camera and posting it and punishing the people that are actually doing the research, editing hours and hours of footage into a video that is appealing to you and actually researching court records to determine outcomes. So, this basically means that I have to take a drastic approach to fixing the regular arrest channel. Without that channel, I can never monetize fishing again. I can never create another channel and monetize it. and I'm basically completely barred from YouTube. So, it's in my best interest to try to fix it. So, what am I doing? Well, I'm currently in the process of deleting over 300 videos. These are videos that were obtained directly from law enforcement agencies, edited by myself, scripts written by myself, based on court records, and even doing the own voice over. I really hate having to do this. I It's like deleting the last few years of work that I've dedicated so much time and money and effort into doing, but it's something that I feel like I have to do. So, now I'm going to post some new videos. I'm going to be on camera more. I'm going to add additional narrations, and I'm probably even going to mix in some fish and wildlife content to show that we are actually educating the public and trying to do good stuff here. I'm hoping that these efforts show YouTube that, hey, we're legitimate people doing this the right way. Now, this is something that hasn't been just affecting my channel. It's been affecting millions of other creators. And people that have been on YouTube for a decade have been getting demonetized overnight and their appeals rejected at 3:00 in the morning. It's becoming a common thing. And it's really unfortunate to see and there's really nowhere else to go. There's nothing nowhere else where we could put our videos to have a substantial impact like they have on YouTube. I've always been a fan of the platform and I've always been a huge fan of the fact that someone can make videos and make a living on YouTube specifically. So, we get to reapply in August and until then, I'm probably going to be stressing out every single day. I don't know if what I'm doing will fix it. I don't have any direction as to how to fix it. So, I'm going to wing it and I'm going to hope it works. In the meantime, I want to thank you all for your support and thank you for watching our channel over the last couple years. All of our supporters have helped our channel grow from zero subscribers to almost 180,000 subscribers on this channel alone. Without you, this wouldn't be possible. This is something that I thought would be interesting to the public, and it would help educate the public along the way. Fish and wildlife content is something that I always thought would be interesting, but I wasn't even sure if it would work. The body camera footage is a much slower pace, and many people don't fish or hunt, but this is an opportunity to educate the public while showing a different side of law enforcement. To this day, we're getting comments about how they didn't even know some of these regulations existed and what they're doing now to be more in line with what the states require. This shows that we've had a positive impact on the environment and regulations going forward. I again thank you for your support. We have the links down below if you choose to help give. If not, it's perfectly fine, too. We're going to try to find a way to make it through. Thank you so much for watching.