Sovereign Citizens Are Extremists Watched By FBI

WASHINGTON — The FBI has been paying closer attention to `sovereign citizen' extremists around the country out of concerns that they will react violently when they interact with government officials.

Sovereign citizens are people who reject their U.S. citizenship and don't recognize government authority, like laws and taxes. In 2009, the FBI started paying closer attention to the movement, which previously had been grouped with the militia movements in the bureau's domestic counterterrorism operations. Many people who claim to be followers of this movement are involved in white collar crimes like tax evasion schemes and making fraudulent documents, the FBI said.

"We started to notice a heightened potential for violence," said Stuart McArthur, deputy assistant director of the FBI's counterterrorism division.

Speaking to reporters at the FBI's national headquarters, McArthur said that while sovereign citizen ideologies are protected by the constitution, there have been instances when extremist members have turned to violence. "The thing about generally sovereign citizen extremists is that because their ideology just intrinsically deals with the rejection, complete rejection, of the constitutional authority of the United States or any other government for that matter ... that when you have an encounter with law enforcement, we have seen that has a potential to go high and right very fast," McArthur said.

McArthur used the 2010 example of when a man and his son shot and killed two police officers during a traffic stop in West Memphis, Ark. The man was a sovereign citizen who previously had only been on the FBI's radar for white collar scams, he said.

Since the enhanced focus on the group starting in 2009, the FBI created a national strategy to address the issue, which includes briefing state and local law enforcement around the country on signs to look for and how to prevent violence.

Casey Carty, a supervisor in the bureau's domestic terrorism section that leads the sovereign citizen extremist program, said that people in the sovereign citizen movement do not tend to gravitate to one specific part of the country and reside in nearly every state. Carty also said that age, gender and race are not consistent among the movement's followers.

Comments

[PhilipTaylor]

10:41 PM on 02/23/2012

Banksters would be a logical group!

[COMMON REASON]

02:21 PM on 03/03/2012

“Banksters”??? Sounds like something Hitler used to call the Jewish Bankers, that got his rise in support of the gassing and oven burning of many innocent people by using hate, fear, and playing up to the ignorance and laziness of the masses to get him into power. It is easy to point the finger at successful people when you are unsuccessful and lazy. You convince yourself that you do not have to take responsibilty for your actions when you can blame others for all of your woes. So yes; Banksters would be a logical group for the Neo-Nazi movement of hate filled individuals. And I would suppose that so long as you are either ignorant, schitzophrenic or both all Corporations are your enemy up and until you yourself are successful enough to own your own Corporation.

[COMMON REASON]

04:40 PM on 02/22/2012

I have been studying the so-called Sovereign Citizen movement for years, after I was given some Sovereign propaganda to look over. Those people are just a joke. They are selfish people who do not want to take responsibility for themselves or their peers. They call the majority of Americans’ “sheeple” because they believe they are better than everyone else and the rules do not apply to them because of it. They have their own version of history, which is fiction; they have their own official documents that are supposedly from the government but is more fiction; and they even have their own way to apply the law which is to just pick a sentence out of a dictionary, a case, an internet site, a law book, or just about anywhere and try to use it as some kind of proof that justifies whatever their own selfish fantasy is at the time. Most of them actually believe all of the lies that are spread by the “Sovereign Guru’s” because they are to ignorant to know better, and that also make them a danger to themselves and everyone around them. These SC’s who really believe that crap hard-core are schitzophrenic.

[ehjay]

01:02 AM on 02/10/2012

"Carty also said that age, gender and race are not consistent among the movement's followers". I suppose that means that they are ordinary citizens going about their daily business. Surely Carty's surveillance must have discovered some common and identifiable political ideology among them, making it possible to say that they lean Right or Left. I bet they are mostly Right Wing. I think Carty exaggerates when he describes it as a movement. A movement has organization, and local and regional HQ OOPs, maybe he's talking about the Tea Party. They openly carry weapons to political gatherings.

[Dixiwrecked]

06:59 PM on 02/09/2012

All they want is to be left alone. and have the RIGHT to be happy that is guaranteed in the COnstitution... .That is not harmful to anyone.. Yet the paranoid GOV wants to restrict them and spy on them etc.. Why is the US so paranoid about people wanting to be free. Isnt tis home of the Free? anymore

[jasmperez]

10:17 AM on 02/09/2012

With illegals and sovereigns, John Lennon was ahead of his time ''Imagine""

[PandaUnbound]

06:38 AM on 02/08/2012

The obama regime is adding to it's enemy list. They will be rounding up American citizens before the 2012 election.

[Paul Replogle]

09:48 PM on 02/08/2012

OH come on, enemies list? Really? What ARE you smoking anyway?

[Skeptic52]

03:52 PM on 02/09/2012

He must be one of the soverign extremists??????

[Dixiwrecked]

07:01 PM on 02/09/2012

In MASS they are readying the FEMA camps.. It was in teh Mass papers a few weeks ago,,, Obama passed the NDAA which allows Americans to be rounded up and help INDEFINITELY at his will.. That is not America

[RetroHousewife]

12:59 AM on 02/08/2012

Which idiots are these? Is there a website to check out? Some sort of identifier? If these people are engaging in such a crime spree, why haven't I heard about it? If they have to go all the way back to 2010 to cite an example of crimes committed by followers of these groups, are they really that big of a threat? In contrast, Mexican gangs in the US grew by 40% says the FBI and one only has to check out the website of any major city - for example LAPD to catch up on the the latest crimes - typically several per day. I guarantee that police officers are in far more danger from Mexican gangs, as is the general population, than from a group with no identifiable membership. If you ask me, it sounds more like a catch-all for anyone who objects to the program of evil and corruption pursued by the Hijacked-by-the-Globalists US Government. Armed with their freshly inked NDAA - midnight knock on the door abomination, a person can be labeled a "Sovereign Citizen" and disappeared. I am sure whatever it is that qualifies a person for the SC label is flexible and can be quickly redefined to fit the targeted citizen.

[MelloY]

10:37 PM on 02/07/2012

I read here and see the left spreading fear of these people on the right. I go to some right wing site and see the same fear of the Occupiers. It's amazing how our two party system has control over so many people's beliefs when the real conflict is between authoritarianism and libertarianism.

[MDean]

04:41 PM on 02/07/2012

Wow, are our FBI guys brilliant, or what? They have noticed that there is a heightened potential for violence from people who are, for all intents and purposes, anarchists. Unless the FBI has determined that the potential of violence from one who subscribes to "individual sovereignty" is significantly higher than the potential of violence from other groups, or the general public, this is not news.

[mjvoter]

04:18 PM on 02/07/2012

Let's just say for a minute that we didn't pay income taxes in this country. Does anybody really think their employer is going to not use this as an excuse to cut pay? The first thing most employers will do if income tax rates drop is cut pay. And cut jobs. We have already seen this. Bush tax cuts has resulted in less pay all around the board except for the wealthy elite. One of the reasons we have this free capitalist society is because we have the income tax base to support it. We can pay for our military. We don't have violent revolutions because we try to provide some safety net for the poor so that people aren't starving in which case they have to turn to crime and civil unrest. Doesn't anybody but me find it amazing that we live in a country this big with this many people and this much poverty and diversity and we don't have constant violent uprisings going on? It's because we use our tax dollars to keep this to a minimum. The OWS protests we have going on here are a joke compared to what is going on in other countries that are not as well off or free as ours.

[MGLLC]

08:56 PM on 02/07/2012

Has it ever occurred to you how controlled our corporate media has become? Protests go on every day, they just don't cover them. They would rather cover stories of a more tabloid nature, what one candidate said of another, blah blah....our media is a joke.

[Solouno]

02:58 PM on 02/07/2012

"Sovereign citizens are people who reject their U.S. citizenship and don't recognize government authority, like laws and taxes."

There's plenty of room for them at Guantanamo Bay!

[wdc39]

11:31 PM on 02/07/2012

Heck, just send them to Cuba and see how long the won't recognize gov't authority.

[Max Dragonard]

02:24 PM on 02/07/2012

Quoting a Reuter's article: "Legal convictions of such extremists, mostly for white-collar crimes such as fraud, have increased from 10 in 2009 to 18 each in 2010 and 2011," FBI agents said.

So, 18 convictions in 2011? There's 350,000,000 people in the U.S. and 18 people were convicted in 2011?

My GOD! It's out of control! What will we do?

[unique]

01:39 PM on 02/07/2012

Interesting the citizens are becoming viollent.
The FBI is not becoming violent. Interesting.

[Dixiwrecked]

07:03 PM on 02/09/2012

I see more police being violent towards everyday people.. Go search youtube. Cops are going nuts. The cops are soon to be replaced by

[unique]

07:18 PM on 02/09/2012

Our police are becoming much more militaristic.
There are cities in the US where law enforcement
have drones patrolling the cities with police.
Our new laws are not to protect our citizens, they
are much more intrusive on our lives.
Look at the TSA, who ever envisioned that you
would go to the airport and get probed and felt up?
Our Government is going nuts. Look at Syria today,
when those in power want to sta in power, see what
they do. Compare that to the US, this is where we
will be going one day. All out Civil War.

[kelliwalters4u]

07:28 PM on 02/25/2012

Exactly!

[Richard Gassen]

12:45 PM on 02/07/2012

I wonder if Ron Paul supports these nutcases.

[RevJimIII]

07:58 PM on 02/08/2012

Doubtful.

[Kye154]

12:35 PM on 02/07/2012

The FBI also considers the long term unemployed and the poor as "Extremist threats" too. Is it any wonder why, when you can't get help, or the attention of your own government? There are many in Washington who are very fearful that this country will explode into another French Style revolt, like what happened in 1789, and that is why they are so bent on having the FBI classify these people as terorists and take out as many of them that might challenge the Washington political power base. Of course, the government pays FBI agents real good, so you know who the FBI agents are going to hold allegiance to, and those agents wouldn't hesitate to trash their own mother either, to keep their jobs.

[unique]

01:41 PM on 02/07/2012

The Government all considers returning Veterans
a threat because they know how to handle guns
and are able to make explosives.