Who am I?

Hello! My name is Austin Siford and I’m a West Virginia native, currently living in Shepherdstown, WV. I grew up in Martinsburg, WV, to a working hospice nurse single mother of three kids in a United Methodist family who had nothing special but each other, in a classic Appalachian low income home life.

Today, I’m a security professional with nearly 15 years of experience currently working as a security leader at a technology company. Previously I worked at West Virginia University for 6 years where I conducted principal institutional security research & investigations for the University system. Additionally I studied computer and political science, and was the first generation of my family to attend a four-year college.

For more about me, read my most recent resume here or check out my LinkedIn profile.

I’m open to having a conversation with you about any topic at a time which fits our schedules. Do not hesitate to ask for the opporunity to do so.

Why am I FOIA’ing you?

A well-informed citizenry is the lifeblood of a functioning democracy. By learning about the operations of our agencies, we can learn how to better support them and in which areas need additional investment by governing bodies.

Additionally, I want to keep people informed of the great work our public safety professionals (police, fire, emergency medical) do, and the tough conditions they have to endure to keep us safe.

What will I do with this information?

The end product will be published on YouTube.com/@WestVirginiaPoliceActivity, with links to the videos syndicated to Facebook. Content will be published largely unedited and will not feature any voice over, personal commentaries, advertisements or sponsored content, or watermarks.

Nothing is being used for political purposes whatsoever and I do not have any ulterior political motives. (I myself am registered Independent / No Party Affiliation).

on sensitive information

Sometimes, information released under WVFOIA and legally classified as “public record” could still be personal or sensitive in nature to an individual.

As stated above, I’m a security professional with over a decade of experience and am regularly in a position where I need to process sensitive or personal information of individuals. My regular computer security and data hygeine practices control this risk significantly.

I will do my best in all cases to redact and remove any critically sensitive information before publishing. Additionally, all content is peer reviewed by at least two independent viewers before ever being published publicly for quality assurance.

on official statements

As noted above, the content will largely be published unedited and without personal commentary. At the end of the published videos, while the copyright-free outro music plays, a slideshow begins of every document page and any supplemental images as released in the FOIA request.

If your agency would like to attach an official statement - beyond what is already included in the released records - please include that in our email communications and I will be sure to feature it.

Do I make any money from this information?

I do not profit whatsoever from making these FOIA requests or from publishing the information received as a result of my requests. I do not monetize the YouTube channel, so I make zero income from ad revenue and choose to disable all ads where possible.

Nobody pays me in any way whatsoever to do this, it is all done by myself on my own time with my own money.

I do not have or accept any corporate sponsorships or include embedded ads in the published content.

In all, I donate large amounts of my own time and money to this cause. While unrelated, I also regularly donate a more than reasonable percentage of my personal yearly income to a number of charitable efforts that mean a lot to me, including: WV CASA Association, Alzheimer’s Association, local area food banks, and a number of others.

Thank You

Sincerely … thank you for your choice of public service.

My childhood and adolescence had been filled with unfortunate circumstances requiring the need of public safety professionals to keep me and my family safe. Further as an innately security-minded individual, you cannot find a bigger supporter of our firefighters, emergency medical personnel, and police.

And as a former state employee, I understand the hard work that’s required to get good changes done, and I know that the greater public often hardly recognize the work and effort by those employees daily, let alone all the others behind-the-scenes.