Why are police a target for sovereign citizen violence?

As the tragic events evolve in Porepunkah, northeast Victoria, media outlets have reported the alleged shooter, Dezi Freeman, is known to be a “sovereign citizen”.

Sovereign citizens believe they are not subject to the law. This view stems from deeply held anti-government beliefs combined with conspiracy thinking that the government was replaced with a corporation that controls us through our birth certificates, licences, and other identification documents. We are only subject to the laws of this corporation, the theory goes, if we choose to enter into a contract with it.

This fundamental rejection of government authority means sovereign citizens refuse to comply with routine processes such as paying taxes and completing random breath tests. They use pseudo-law – legal-sounding but ultimately false arguments – to disobey police and disrupt the court system.

Videos of sovereign citizens refusing to comply with police orders have gone viral, and can be viewed as novelty or entertainment. However, the killing of two police officers in Porepunkah and a previous ambush of police in Wieambilla, Queensland, show that some sovereign citizens can become radicalised and highly dangerous.

So what makes police a possible target for sovereign citizen violence? And why do some sovereign citizens radicalise?

Why do sovereign citizens target police?

Police officers are the frontline representatives of government authority. They enforce the law in our communities, which means they come into frequent contact with sovereign citizens who reject their authority and defy their orders.

This means police bear the brunt of sovereign citizen resistance. But other sources of authority — including judges, court clerks, tax officers and public servants — also face it.

Many encounters arise during routine policing duties. Traffic stops or roadside breath tests can escalate quickly when sovereign citizens refuse to comply with police directions. As many of the videos on social media show, these incidents might amount to a heated argument or scuffle over an arrest, but not a serious attack. Nonetheless, there is an underlying risk of harm.

We are examining police body-worn camera footage to map how these interactions progress and how they can best be de-escalated to avoid harm.

At the start of an interaction, there are typically warning signs that police are dealing with a sovereign citizen. Sovereign citizens often use “private” number plates, have symbols or writing on their vehicles, and hand over large files of pseudo-law documents. There might also be a warrant out for their arrest.

As the tragic events in Porepunkah and Wieambilla show, police attending a property to carry out an arrest warrant of a sovereign citizen can be a highly volatile situation. In Wieambilla, the attackers were driven primarily by extreme religious beliefs, but they had engaged with various anti-government conspiracy theories online and were heavily influenced by a sovereign citizen in the United States.

Research on sovereign citizen violence against police in the US describes two types of ambush: entrapment (planned) and spontaneous (unplanned). Most fatal ambushes involved entrapment. That study mapped 75 acts of sovereign citizen violence against law enforcement between 1983 and 2020, in which 27 officers were killed.

At this stage, we don’t know whether the Porepunkah shooting was a planned ambush or a spontaneous response to police arriving on the property. We do know the suspect was known to police from many prior interactions.

In all these encounters – from less to more serious, planned or unplanned – sovereign citizens view police as agents of an illegitimate, unlawful government.

When they resist police orders, sovereign citizens believe they are legitimately resisting the tyranny of state control, and defending their inherent rights and freedoms as a “living being”.

In Wieambilla, the attackers even viewed police as “demons and devils” in the second coming of Christ.

Why do some sovereign citizens radicalise to violence?

Radicalisation is a social-psychological process in which someone adopts and internalises extreme beliefs and progresses towards acts of violence.

Earlier radicalisation models focused on ideology as the most important factor and described “pathways”, “conveyor belts” and “staircases” to terrorism. Now, radicalisation is understood to involve diverse processes resulting from many different risk factors interacting.

Risk factors for radicalisation include social isolation, the lack of a clear sense of identity and purpose, strongly held grievances, negative childhood experiences (such as abuse or bullying), and trigger events (such as divorce or job loss).

Many of these are innocuous by themselves, and something most people experience at some time in their lives. However, if enough risk factors combine with extreme belief systems, this can lead to criminal acts, violence and terrorism.

There are not many studies on the radicalisation of sovereign citizens specifically, and much of what we know about radicalisation comes from studies of Islamist and far-right terrorists. Still, there is likely overlap between sovereign citizen and far-right radicalisation, given both can be driven by extreme anti-government views.

A recent review of international evidence suggests sovereign citizens are more likely to be male, older, experiencing financial difficulties and relationship troubles, and have previous negative experiences with authority.

We recently fielded a national Australian survey which confirms these findings. The average person agreeing with sovereign citizen beliefs in our sample was 52-years-old and experiencing financial troubles. They were more likely to have a criminal record and hold deep distrust towards government. They were more likely to believe in conspiracy theories, were highly cynical of the law, and showed high levels of trait reactance (in short, they don’t like being told what to do).

People with high trait reactance are more likely to resist directions they view as restricting their freedom or autonomy.

We also found people agreeing with sovereign citizen beliefs were more likely to support violence and have engaged in violence in the past.

This helps explain who is more likely to become a sovereign citizen, and it points to some links between sovereign citizen ideology and violence. But it doesn’t tell us why some sovereign citizens are more likely to be violent than others.

That question is likely to be answered in individual cases by the interplay of various risk factors for radicalisation. It is a question that researchers, police and intelligence agencies will continue to grapple with as sovereign citizen ideas pose ongoing threats to the community.