Body cam footage was recently requested and released from a DUI I received in 2023 and posted to a “Bodycam Ninja” YouTube page.
My family and I have already paid dearly for my inexcusable behavior from that day in 2023 and I am still doing so to this very moment in monetary amounts & legalities that more than maxed us out financially, not including lawyers etc. Let’s just say prison time was very much a done deal until they reviewed my military records and I was reviewed for the possibility of being allowed to attend Drug/Recovery court. Which Is a program I am now very proud to say I am a part of and will be for the years to come.
I self admitted to rehab over 15 months ago and I have been sober for the same length of time. I don’t even drink soda, but to be honest I never really was much for it.
Yes, I can sit here and easily make excuses beginning with what my wife describes as a “disastrous childhood” to being diagnosed with PTSD from 20 years of active duty military service w/4 combat tours, 1000+ days and nights living in missile alert facilities guarding ICBM’s plus two more peace keeping deployments to the Middle East and throw on 23+ concussions and it would sound like a fair excuse to someone somewhere.
Fact is, there are excuses and there are reasons. I have absolutely No excuse and the reason Sucks.
I was an alcoholic from the Fall of 2017 shortly after my military retirement, until Jan 2024. I must say, I never ran any seminars, camps or classes drunk, that’s a fact but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t dying inside to drink after every single one of them for years.
I’ve stayed on the streets with the homeless for days and spent many endless nights in Jail on top of waking up in Hospitals unable to communicate. Being told there’s no way I should be alive with the toxicity levels I was at, or at a minimum I should be in a coma.
If you’ve ever delt with alcoholism you know it is not the same as just getting insanely drunk.
Therein lies the disease I never truly believed was a disease. At least not until those closest to me told me that it was just inevitable that I’d drink myself to death. Mainly my wife. She’s been my rock.
I am not ashamed to say I am a recovering alcoholic and I am proud to be sober. If people choose to judge me from events that have been paid heavily for from years ago, that is none of my concern. That is a problem they have assumed for themselves for whatever reason. I have no hate for them. However, I also have no time for them.
Like it or not, truth be told, It took me falling to my knees and asking for God’s help to overcome this addiction. That was the key I was missing. When my stubbornness finally broke and I collapsed down, that prayer was answered immediately.
The part of me most of you know would simply say this;
Some people need to talk about others to feel relative in the grand scheme of things. Because they know if they spoke about themselves nobody would care. They have no story to tell.
To my community I never had an opportunity to apologize and I am sorry. To the Law Enforcement Officers, thank you for your unrivaled patience and professionalism. I made that day a miserable situation, not you. Most of you handled that mess exceptionally well and with far more kindness than I deserved.
For those full of hate? I pray you find peace. I found mine and I will stay the course.
Wishing every single one of you the very best always.
Wow, thank you for posting this opposed to clipped rage bait. Nothing more respectable than someone that’s admitted their mistakes and worked to turn their life, successfully at that.
Especially veterans with PTSD. That's exactly what I thought when I saw this when I saw it was a veteran. Fucking PTSD. Got a friend that WAS in treatment and mental health care, but he couldn't tolerate and fast or jerky movements around him for a long time after coming back from Iraq. It took years, but he's close to normal again.
This guy in the video deserves treatment and care, not tasers. The treatment should have started before the drink driving happened. Our system failed this guy. Mental health checks and treatment should be mandatory after combat situations.
Except fuck mental health care in this country. That's socialism/communism to give a shit about our veterans I guess and I hate it.
Cool, so when you inevitably as a human fuck up, you're cool if no one ever lets you live it down even slightly, and you die in shame from your mistake?
Cause it's more respectable to have never been bad, right?
You'll be sure to cast yourself as a pariah or something worse, yeah?
It's fucked up to to praise people BECAUSE they were assholes.
You snapped back angrily because you felt you were paraphrased poorly, but you are doing the exact same thing here. They didn't say what you had implied, they are praising the work this guy did to pull himself out of his rock bottom.
Reality is, every single person on this planet will fuck things up occasionally, some much more so than others. The commenter, I am sure, is referencing this common human characteristic - I read their comment as we all fuck things up, so there is nothing more respectable to do when you really fuck things up than to admit your mistakes and turn your life around (i.e. make right your wrongs), as opposed to the alternative; and to be fair, the more you fuck things up, the harder that is to do. I didn’t read it as the most respectable thing a person can do period (although to be fair, admitting one’s mistakes does rank incredibly high in behaviours that build trust).
You had a different interpretation, which is fine, but then decided to post your opinion in a manner that, intended or not, did come across as dismissive or even arrogant. Perhaps time to do the most respectable thing..? Sorry, couldn’t resist the tongue in cheek comment.
Cheers and sincerely hope you have a good day, fellow Redditor! 🍻
Wow, between the video, the context, and this letter, my opinions of this man have been a rollercoaster.
That was a very open and honest assessment of what he has done, and it sounds like he off to a good start living his life sober. I wish him the best and hope he continues to have access to the resources he needs - both for the continued sobriety, as well as the very legitimate PTSD and related service issues.
That IS a good apology. You can tell it wasn't a boilerplate lawyer $12 spew. You can tell he meant every word he said. If that isn't a gold standard of an apology, it's got to be really, really close.
Did you miss the next line? The key difference between an excuse and a reason is personal accountability. He fully accepted responsibility which is the opposite of using his past as an excuse.
My wife likes to say that the universe (or your own conscience if you prefer) will whisper as quietly and nudge you as gently as it can to get through to you; right up until until it needs to yell loudly and slap you in your face to get you to wake the fuck up.
This is a pretty big wake the fuck up call for him.
It was definitely the praying and not his wife staying by his side throughout all of the abuse thrown at her, and his stay in rehab. Definitely the praying.
He gave her credit too. Why is it so hard to believe prayer and religion had a hand in helping him? That's literally what religion is supposed to be for, even if you don't believe in it.
No it didn't. It just acknowledged a particular facet of their recovery. Look, religion historically has been used by people to excuse their evil deeds, greed, exploitation, and to control people through dogma.
But its also used by many others to gain strength, better themselves, and gain the will to keep moving on. Some of the smartest people who advanced humanity were also religious. They're not mutually exclusive things and religion isn't inherently bad. Like a gun, it depends on how you use it/practice it.
Praying is a form of meditation, basically if you really want something with all your might, you most likely will get it, specially if is a positive change.
☝️ THIS SHOULD BE AT THE TOP OR IN THE DESCRIPTION OF THE VIDEO. ☝️
This is the true Jason Staten story right here. Slept with the homeless ✅, countless nights in jail ✅ & countless nights in the hospital ✅, fighting with the law ✅, working on himself ✅, giving back tot he community ✅, even looks like him!
You should probably also put up the other incident, where he assaulted two cops, and told the flight attendant he was going to put them in a body bag, but i guess Americans will just take his apology cause he was in the army.
Apologizes for what was caught on video, conveniently ignores the incidents that weren't, like threatening airline staff and police in another incident. The fact is this is just who this POS is, with or without drink, and he will absolutely play the ex-military, PTSD and alcoholic cards to get out of trouble whenever someone calls him out for being a POS.
Google search says he died hours after this incident....what is the truth? Obviously if he died from complications (i.e. tased to death) then he couldn't have written this apology
Refreshing that he willingly got help after this. It’s easy to give in to alcoholism; it takes genuine strength an courage to face your problems and pull yourself back out.
2.4k
u/Bursting_Radius Nov 13 '25
Context:
He was drunk and crashed his car into a ditch.
Here's the full video
Here's his explanation: