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Edit Transcript - Why did I start YouTube and How Much Money Do I Make?
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Why did I start YouTube and How Much Money Do I Make?
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[Music] hey guys it's officer Ben here uh I don't put my face on this channel very often but this year I'm getting ready to take my Christmas break I'm actually a little bit late I should have started my Christmas break a little bit sooner but regardless I'm going to take a little break probably won't be back until mid to late January and I wanted to make kind of a special video for you guys and this year I decided that uh rather than making a highlight reel like I often do you know I've been doing this for about three years now and there are probably three big questions that I get quite a bit and today what I'm going to do with this video is I'm going to answer those three questions uh the first question that I get a lot from citizens and from police officers and all sorts of people is why did I start this YouTube channel uh the second question I'm going to answer for you guys today is how much money do I make on this YouTube channel and then the third question that I get a lot it's kind of a combination of of questions and that question is am I a real police officer or am I just a YouTuber um and then also a lot of people when they're watching videos they'll say you know the narrator's voice and the officer's voice sound very familiar to me and a lot of people that have been watching the channel for a long time have kind of figured this out but uh I do want to confirm that yes I am the officer in this video that took the the homeless pregnant woman out for a meal I'm the officer in an awful lot of the videos on this channel um I am for lack of a better term kind of everybody's favorite officer on this channel mostly because these are incidents that I was involved in so I know how to pull the video I know where the video is at I know what's on it so I'll I'll submit records requests for my own incidents and put them out on YouTube to show people kind of not only how I am as a police officer but how these types of interactions very frequently very often go out on the streets so um I'll get back to to this video I'll give you a little bit of backstory on it here in just a minute I don't want to take up too much time with this video cuz I haven't had breakfast yet I want to go upstairs and get something to eat but the first question why did I start this YouTube channel uh that one it's it's a little bit more complicated it takes a little bit of a process but if you remember back to 2020 the summer of 2020 that is when I started this YouTube channel and uh sorry I don't think I muted my phone um you know the stuff that was going on the summer of 2020 that was a summer of violent riots across the the country every major city in the country had violent riots including Columbus and there were a lot of people who were using uh incidents that happened in Kentucky and Minesota in order to gain political power over their local police departments and that was something that happened here in Columbus with the Mayor of Columbus and city council and all that other stuff uh one of the big things that happened here in Columbus was that the uh the mayor and the mayor's office and the political establishment they took over control of the police department social media accounts and for um a period of time in the summer of 2020 there were basically no posts made on social media from the Columbus Division of police and the only posts that were being made were actually written by uh the political establishment and the police department was told you will post this so they were posting it word for word it's kind of funny because there was a lot of typos and stuff in some of those uh my favorite post of 2020 on the columb division of police Facebook page was one that said uh the mayor's office has not taken over this Facebook account which was an absolute freaking lie um but regardless of that so one night I was at work uh got to work at 11:00 we're all sitting around the roll call table the alert tone goes out uh before we had a chance to get car assignments and it was a it was a shooting somebody was shot in the chest and and laying out in the alley screaming for help so myself and a whole bunch of officers ran to our Cruisers we didn't even have time to grabb all of our gear uh drove to the scene find this guy out in the alley turns out it was a dope house uh this guy was in the dope house somebody came in to rob the dope house he got shot in the chest uh the people in the dope house drug him out to the alley thinking that you know we wouldn't go into the house if we found him in the alley officers arrived on scene he had his he had what is known as a sucking chest wound uh so one of the officers on scene ran to the Cruisers first aid kit grabbed a chest seal went and put a chest seal on this man we waited for Medics to arrive when the Medics arrived the battalion chief went to the sergeant on scene and said hey you know your guys did a fantastic job if your guys had not put this chest seal on the guy he probably would have been dead before we even got here uh your officer's actions 100% saved this man's life uh my supervisor at the time uh said hey you know thanks a lot congratulated the guys whatever but he also sent an email up the chain of command said Hey look we had this incident last night where my guy saved this dude's life and I actually have video of a battalion chief saying you know your gu saved this guy's life he would have been dead you know yada Yad y I think this would be really good PR right now in the summer of 2020 with all these riots going on where we need to you know we really need some some positive information about the police I think this would be good to put out and um the answer that was filtered back down to me was that no they're not going to post that and then when when he asked why that wasn't being post through a variety of sources he was basically told you know what the political establishment has taken over the social media accounts and they have decided that people don't like the police right now and that they're that is the narrative that they're going to continue to push and if you looked at the city social media at that time got a lot of stuff from the mayor out there saying that the police are are have a history of racism systemic racism that they need intensive reform you know uh hired outside investigators paid law firms hundreds of thousands of dollars to try to find corruption in the police department called in the Department of Justice to investigate the police department uh the moral of the story was that the good things that police officers were doing was not being allowed to uh make it out to the public because the political establishment decided that that was not going to benefit them politically in their attempts to gain and seize power power over the police department and control the narrative um when I became aware of that I said you know what uh screw those people there's nothing that they can do to stop me from making public records requests on these incidents myself and I will go ahead and start posting them um I found out later that you know when there's Grievous injuries and felonies some of the laws have actually changed since then but back in 2020 if it was a fresh felony case uh public records was not releasing that there were allowed to redact that if they wanted to it was like at their discretion the law on that has since changed um but that kind of dictated what kind of stuff I started pulling and putting on YouTube because I wanted to show that you know that police officers were were not doing the things that was the narrative that was out there um you know one of the one of the funny things about police body camera is that when they were introduced to police departments they were done in a way we were told this was to hold police officers accountable uh that if we put body cameras on officers we'd find a whole lot of police corruption and racism and and all this stuff it would be impossible to hide uh but what we've really found by putting body cameras on officers is that officers 99.999% of the time are fantastic people they do fantastic things they do really good things for the public and we've also found it's very difficult to find incidence instances of police misconduct um it's it just doesn't happen as often as you would think it it does and you can have access to the body camera database and you can search for days and days and days and days and not find a single incident of police misconduct where you're going to find is a lot of officers doing exactly what they're supposed to be doing and that is the reason I created this channel because I wanted to show that The Narrative that is out there that is being pushed by a lot of these political activists this in order to gain and cease power of uh the narrative that that that narrative was false so that is the reason I started this YouTube channel uh the next question let me see I can pull it up here um the next question is how much money do I make with this YouTube channel the answer is zero I make zero dollars on this YouTube channel um this is my YouTube channel these are the analytics if it's going to load all right um You can see how many views I get per day per month watch time all that I'm in a little bit of a uh a slow period right now partially because I haven't been uploading videos and then some of the videos I've uploaded just haven't been as popular as they were in the past um but regardless here are my analytics there's nothing this is the section where there should be some dollars there's no dollars there if you go to earn um it talks about how I can apply for the mon ization program I have not applied for the monetization program on this channel this channel is not monetized I make Z on YouTube uh now this one and I'm going to show a little bit of this once I get my face out of the way here uh this is a very popular video on the channel this is one of my body camera videos uh this is where I as an officer met a homeless woman who was pregnant and I took her out for a meal one of the interesting things about this particular incident was this happened I want to say in 20 late 2018 or sometime in 2019 it was at least a year before I started the body camera channel uh one of the criticisms that I get from people is they're like oh sure you're going to show us your body camera and show us that you're such a great guy because you're putting it on YouTube and you're just doing these things for YouTube clout um no I I'm I'm not doing anything for YouTube clout uh this is just this is who I am this is the oops this is a little dark um this is who I am this is the kind of guy I am this is the kind of Officer I am and I was doing these things prior to starting YouTube um this particular night with this particular woman um I remember it very well cuz it was a very busy night in the area where I work and uh there was a call from a woman who said she was at an auto part store on West Broad Street wanted a ride to um a rehab Center and on if you if you looked at the notes on the run at the time it said something like we told her that we weren't a taxi service but she was demanding that an officer respond and yada yada yada it was very busy I was the only car that was clear I remember reading this and I was like you know what I'm going to go out there I'm going to tell this woman we're not a taxi service I'm not just going to give you a ride so there this this uh auto part store where she said she was it's kind of funny because there's auto part stores on both sides of the street there's one on the north side one on the Southside it's um an advanced auto parts and then I can't remember the the name of the other auto parts store but it's another major major retail chain that sells automotive parts and one of them is open 24 hours one of them is not uh when I saw auto part store on West Broad Street I drove to the one that's open 24 hours because that's the one that people are normally at I think this was 2 3 in the morning um I drive out to this place I drive a couple laps around the parking lot there's nobody there I clear uh I see the Run pop back up hey woman calling in on response time wants to know where an officer is I was told an officer responded didn't find her she says she's been there the whole time no officer has responded so I drive back out to the auto part store drive around in circles I get out of my car I look I go into the store hey was there someone here calling for a ride nope nobody so I clear the run again um I I I go back to doing whatever it is I do run pops back up on the board I tell the dispatcher I'm like can you call this woman make sure she gets the correct address make sure she actually knows where she is because that's also a common problem that we have people calling they don't actually know where they are he he gets me back on a back Channel and says hey I called her she's very upset she's adamant that this is the address where she's at she's at blah blah blah and uh that is when it dawned on me he said the address out loud and it was an even numbered address um even number addresses are on the north side of the street odd number addresses are on the south side of the street I'd been going to the south side of the street every time that I went out on this call so this was the third time that I was heading out I pull up into the the parking lot and I see her and uh you know she's she's walking up to me she's crying that she's just she's had about enough of it and all these other things I felt horrible I was like damn I was like you know I was like I was a assuming that this person was just an idiot didn't know where they are I was kind of cocky and arrogant about the way I handled this call and here I am she's actually pregnant she's visibly pregnant she's homeless she's she told me that she's been living in a an open field for a period of months whatever um and she was leaving her her spouse I can't remember if she was married or if it's just like her long-term partner this is a very traumatic experience for her she's pregnant and she wants to get clean she wants to do something positive for herself um after after I met her I felt really horrible about kind of the way things had been going that night uh so while I was driving her to where I was taking her and it was a busy night I didn't get a chance to eat lunch yet I was kind of hungry myself um I decided to do something nice for her I was like hey you know you want to get something to eat I wanted to I didn't she didn't know um all of the things that had transpired with me prior to that but still I felt bad I felt kind of guilty and also there was no rush you know this place that she was going it didn't matter if we got there a half hour later so I offered her some lunch and we stood outside of the cruiser we had a meal treated her like a a just a regular human being probably a way that she hadn't been treated in a very long time uh made me feel kind of uh you know when you're doing this job and you see so much negativity and all that sometimes you need to kind of refill your battery um this was one of those incidents where I did something nice for somebody made them feel good um kind of re filled my battery and it's something that I never told anybody about um I didn't go to work and brag about it I probably told my wife about it um but it's not something that I went around talking a lot about then when I started this body camera Channel and I was trying to think of incidents that occurred within the last two years that I could do public records requests for and put out on the internet to kind of show the world of stuff that police officers do this was one of the first things that I thought about this one and then the uh the guy that was standing in the middle of the road in like women's underwear that smoked a bunch of crack um that one too happened prior to me starting the body camera Channel as well as some other ones I I don't remember them all um also Johnny the guy that overdosed on the wrong side of town that I had to call his mom and have her come pick him up that was another one that that incident occurred before I started the body camera Channel um I don't know I I just wanted to kind of put that information out there kind of confirm some of these things there's a lot of people on the internet saying a lot of things about people um I'm one of them my identity has already been out there and revealed um I have no reason to hide for any reason whatsoever uh most of the things that people are saying about me are simply not true but regardless I wanted to come out and just say look and this is this is the reason I started the channel I'm not making any money from it and this is the type of police officer that I am if you would like to know a little bit more about why I became a police police officer in my background I'm going to put a clip in from this moment where I was having lunch with this homeless woman where I actually explained my background to her give her a little bit of uh information about me it's very accurate information I'm going to share that with you um and then we're going to get out of here so without further Ado here is the second half of the video where I was having lunch with this woman give her my backstory and you'll have it now as well so um before I get off I just want to say thank you very much for subscribing to my channel following this journey that I've been taking for the last 3 years I've it's this this Channel and the stuff that I've accomplished with this YouTube channel are something I'm incredibly proud of um not only have I had an influence on public opinion of police officers but also I've used this channel um to generate funds for charity and over the last three years I have raised over $1,000 um for charity the first event that I did was I raised I did a live stream on my other channel uh where I raised about $5,000 for a single mother domestic violence um victim who needed a new furnace for her home um I forget how much the furnace cost but the rest of the money just went straight to her to help her literally feed and clothe her children uh then this past summer we raised $3600 for pelonia I believe it was somewhere around $3600 to fund cancer research and then uh most recently I did my 50 mile ruck march in honor of my friend Todd Bates who died 20 years ago this year in uh in Baghdad Iraq while I was serving with him um and so far the GoFundMe that I created for that is raised about $33,600 so over over the last three years with my social media accounts that have stemmed from this body camera Channel I've been able to raise um over $1,000 for charity and that's all because of you guys and the support that you all have been giving me so thank you very much for your support thank you for supporting uh the police officers and and things in these videos thank you for watching um I'm going to be out of here for a little while and have a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year and uh I will talk to you guys later there you are here we'll get up on the hood of the car okay there's that 10 was returned to there you go how um 8 years I've been on did you always want to be a cop no no I uh you know what's funny when I was a kid when I was getting ready to graduate high school I thought that maybe I'd want to be a cop so I pulled up next to uh an officer in my hometown and I asked him some questions about like how to become come a police officer and stuff he told me he's his name was officer super he looked at me he goes you know what he's like you seem like you're a pretty smart kid he goes don't do this he like don't do this with your wife it's like good do something else yeah he said uh he didn't he's he wouldn't wish it on anybody so I went in the military then when I got out of the military I got a degree in economics and I worked as a financial adviser for like 5 years and uh what's on these Burgers they don't have mayonnaise or anything no it's just uh okay cheese pickles and good I can handle that but uh I kind of I had a bunch of clients who were police officers for Columbus and they told me that I'd like the job and so I took the test and then I got hired yeah so I left my job working at a bank to come do this at night I've been doing it for8 years now that is very crazy mhm my uncle was a CPD oh really he's retired now Richard Griggs um when he first started he was um he'd go around and pick up prostitutes M and that's how he met his now wife oh my go she wasn't a prostitute or whatever but he was doing that and didn't want to tell her at first that that's what he was doing on the job um but as he retired he was a undercover narcotics officer um I'm pretty sure he was somewhere down Hilltop or Bottom's area but I don't know for sure cuz I guess we weren't allowed to know well they cover a lot of ground too yeah so but those guys tend to work with the whole city probably everywhere between the south end and the hilltop well my he doesn't talk to me very often he says he not allowed to it's against their policy because I have felonies on my record like at the end of the day I'm still family like but whatever MH um but when I've reported some drug houses to him m M hoping that if they get busted that I'm forced to stop um but my mom usually calls and tells him cuz it's her brother she oh so you let her know and then yeah and then she lets him know and he lets whoever in that area [Music] know but he's retired now right mhm I guess he still goes in a couple days a week sometimes huh said his name is Griggs MH I'll look him up okay well I was look I we have a Personnel list I can just look him up by last name and see I have a buddy on that department his last name is I'm pretty sure not related to him I don't think so was my dad last name oh okay yeah we got hired together he works up North so you guys really just been living out in that field yeah crazy isn't there people around that area that have tents and stuff they're like back in the woods at first we were staying in the storage shed and I know it's illegal too but somehow the owner found out and um came it was like 10:30 at night and he came there luckily we had just got there and didn't have any blankets or anything out I told him we was just in there changing our clothes mhm so there wasn't too much you could do about it but obviously we didn't stay in there no more so then we were staying on the lot across from it which is Le a lot and somehow the city got called on us for that so we got kicked off of there so last we week and a half we've stayed in that lot that's crazy y least the weather's been okay right it does get kind of chilly at night and first thing in the morning mhm but we had blankets and stuff I know some of the people that have tents have a pretty nice setup in their tents oh yeah they do I they're just like cool with it like mhm I'm not cool with it like yeah I don't want to do that for years and years like do you have other kids yes this is my fifth kid where are the other ones at in Kentucky with my mother okay are you going to try to get clean and go down there I'm probably not going to go to Kentucky no but but that is my goal is to get clean and get Kaylee and Raiden back I want Damian and Mason back but they're 15 and 14 now and they were a year and a half and 8 months old or so when my mom first started getting them all the time so she's had them this whole time so and they go to school down there they're doing really good in schooling and everything so I don't want to take them from her and they'll be adults in a couple years anyways like obviously they say Mom we want to come with you I would get them as well but um Kaye and Raiden's only four and two how often do you see them I usually once a month and when I when we had a ride I'd see them a couple times a month cuz I drive down to Kentucky but my mom always tries to come at least once a month to bring them to me that's been a long time yeah my baby girl turns 5 on Friday tomorrow I've got a 5-year-old yeah y 5 and seven and I turned 40 this weekend oh wow a happy birthday I'm only 33 my husband and me between the two of us we have seven kids six boys and one girl Kay's the only girl cuz this is a boy too when are you do January I'll love it you think Mary Haven is going to help get a place Grant said they would cuz on my dis paperwork to come back next Tuesday they gave me the number but they called it masks or something and um I she said because you are pregnant they have a walk indoor policy you can go anytime during the day anytime during the night because you are pregnant they have to accept you so it was either that or they was going to kick me out of the suboxin clinic and then I'd be screwed on a baby and Children's Services would get involved and I just lose the baby automatically cuz yeah it would be born addicted to drugs and I would have drugs in my system and I don't want that I'm sure there's there's definitely some stuff going on right now with the stuff that you're using in the baby to so it's best that you get in some place right rather than off the street cuz I didn't want to leave my husband like we didn't want to be separated well but this is a little bit more important it's more important to take care of me and my baby and he ripped up our marriage license tonight pulled the blankets from me and took them all from me and left I said all right B bet you'll never see me again and he don't know that I left he don't know where I went and he'll have no way to contact me cuz if he calls Mary Haven they won't let him know that I'm there and they don't allow any visits or anything there while you're there so nobody knows that I called you guys but my mom mhm and my mom's not going to tell them and you don't plan on seeing them anymore nope well I mean if that's the right thing to do then I hope that you stick to it but most of the time people don't stick with that story and they they go back on it this is the third time I'm I'm done I want my baby grow back and he obviously isn't going to do nothing to improve our situation mhm cuz it just keeps getting worse um I got to quit being selfish and thinking about me cuz I brought kids into this world and it should be about them cuz they don't have a choice mhm and it's not fair no I mean kids born in that situation have a hard life yes they do and it's not fair to them MH and that's what I told him before like cuz I've been on and off drugs pretty much much my whole life I've always been able to stop when I was pregnant cuz I feel that that's not a decision as a mother that I can make for them to do drugs and I don't want to harm my kids but with this one I can't stop and I think it's just the extra stress and being homeless which you would think it' be easier to stop because you wouldn't have the money but mhm there's all kinds of ways to make money just stand and they're holding the sign even though it's illegal mhm I can make $100 $120 a day that I wouldn't make sitting in a house you know so where do you guys usually stand at right in front of Kroger oh really H yeah they don't run you off or anything yeah oh they do yep a few times they have it's crazy though how much you spend on drugs a day you think like 30 bucks 40 bucks oh really that's all I it's a too much but it could be worse I do try not to do a lot of it but if I don't have the sub boxing or I want to get high I also don't want to be sick cuz that can harm the baby as well the stress of me withdrawing and me being sick can kill the kid so when you're sick and don't have anything it's easier to come up with that $10 than it is for the $20 for suboxin cuz they're more than the actual drugs are because they want to keep you hooked they don't want you to get off of them because then they don't have their business no more yeah and I think I know that well I know that like for the girls down on solvent they give them free dope all the time just to keep them working a lot of people come and tell me that like I've had people walk up to me and ask me and I tell them no cuz I know it sounds crazy but I don't know you and I can't like don't trust you I'm not just going to sniff something MH cuz I don't want it to kill me like if I feel as if I'm not a friend I can't really say a friend because a friend wouldn't sell a friend drugs m i could potentially kill them but if you're not somebody that I feel I can trust I'm not just going to get drugs off of anybody that's crazy to me yeah make sure my walkie is still working I got a little bit of common sense to me but when you're sick or high that you don't think about it wait okay I don't know I've never degraded myself I'll never went out was sold myself like and there's been days where it be so much easier to do that and I was amazed by standing on the corner how many men actually ask women that stuff like I probably get asked at four five six times a day like dude I'm holding a sign I'm not walking the streets why do you keep yeah asking me and they'll be like are you sure or they'll come back and like no never once in my life have I ever done it I'm start now once you start doing that you really lose sight of things that's what I figur like cuz I know it'd be easy money you know what I mean but I'm cool yeah I still have a little bit of self-pride mhm it's funny every once I'll be driving down solvent and there will be like a an attractive girl walking down the road who's not working and you can see all the cars pull off to her pull off to her y one night I I mean she must have just been leaving a friend's house or something she was all she looked real nice she was wearing nice clothes young girl and I saw like three guys pull up to her and she told them all to go away mhm and I pulled up and off her offered her a ride I was like do you want to ride so that guys sto doing this and she's like she was literally she's like I live right down the street so I'm good now like all right but it's funny just watching dudes do that stuff and it's it's crazy that dudes actually do it because okay I would say every single one of them have something mhm because they're doing that with multiple people and I'm sure 90% of them are IV drug users mhm I I know so I do the heroin but I sniff it doesn't make it no better than the neck but they're potentially getting everything and it's just dirty like yeah it's gross yeah go home and watch a movie yeah something no I can't imagine well and I think a lot of it is guys that want to have control over women you know they they like the fact that they had this woman who's like weak and desperate and that turns them on yeah um to me it's just not my thing no that's just well plus I mean obviously I Arrest A lot of people and I arest a lot of people on s Avenue lot of those a lot of those girls are kind of gross mhm you know I see some of them in the bus the magazines like somebody was buying that yeah yeah really it's even worse when they're in your car and you smell them and no it's nasty that's the other thing too and they got all those all their Mera wounds that are seeping and how many men do you pick up on that that we pick up like with hookers or that are hookers that are hookers well like I'm not Vice so I don't get into that um like I don't and you have to be undercover basically to arrest the prostitutes m i just arrest people who I know are prostitutes you know and but there's I've I've talked to a lot of dudes who are drug addicts that will suck a guy's dick for money I mean I've I've seen that multiple times really yeah there's there's a lot of guys that are like that they're they're on the street and they're addicts and it is what it is and there's a lot of guys gay for this stay they're just gay for the drug yeah there's a lot of guys that like gay guys that'll come down to Avenue looking for dudes like I I didn't talk to the the guy in the car last night but I talked to a guy who came and flagged me down he's like hey there's a guy in a white car that pulled up and offered to suck my dick and all this other stuff so right it's gross that is gross I was wondering how many people actually no it's out there U well and there's a bunch of crossdresses here I'll take the trash over there you can hang on your [Music] for
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