This article is from 2012, I include it as it gives an excellent overview of the basic background for understanding the Sovereign Movement.
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For the most part sovereigns and their beliefs were not a major concern for law enforcement until two years ago. That's when two West Memphis, Ark., officers—Brandon Paudert and Bill Evans—were murdered by a father and son team of sovereigns during a drug interdiction traffic stop. The sovereigns were later killed in a fierce gun battle in a nearby Walmart parking lot.
The West Memphis cop killings and the subsequent shootout put the sovereign citizen movement on the radar of many law enforcement officers, but there are still numerous officers who are not aware of the dangers presented by this philosophy and how to recognize its adherents.
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"Sovereign citizen" is a broad, general term that is often applied to any individual person or group that does not believe that the laws of the United States or the state laws apply to them. In other words, they are beyond the jurisdiction of law enforcement authority. The term "sovereign citizen" should be viewed as an umbrella under which you will find thousands of loosely organized groups or individuals that share one basic ideological principle but approach it through different paths.
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While each sovereign group holds its own specific creeds, conspiracies, and focal points, what they all have in common is an extreme ire for government and its agents, and particularly law enforcement. Sovereigns generally subscribe to a loose anarchist ideology, holding firmly to notions of archaic common law doctrines, or no law at all.
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American sovereign groups are commonly delineated along racial lines. White American sovereigns tend to be concerned with the U.S. Constitution and state constitutions, and their interpretations of those documents in a historical context. African-American sovereigns often lean toward Moorish history and African culture as the basis of their sovereignty. Religion, particularly the Moorish Science Temple, may also play a role in racial division and recruitment or indoctrination within a particular sovereign group. (e.g. http://interestinghmm.blogspot.com/2014/07/blog-post.html)
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Sovereigns take legitimate historical events and obscure common law and twist and change them to fit their particular claims or assertions. Their hope is that the ensuing confusion results in law enforcement and/or the judicial system's unwillingness to effectively deal with them. The fact that most of their arguments and documents contain a slight hint of factual basis and an overwhelming amount of pseudo-legal language, including the mention of various acts, amendments, and treaties, only adds to the confusion.
One example common to the philosophies of many sovereigns is the Theory of Redemption. This theory claims that the United States went bankrupt in 1933 when it chose to no longer use the gold standard to back up its paper currency. Needing collateral to trade and conduct commerce with other countries, the United States began to use citizens as collateral to ensure the value of its money. Subsequently, secret bank accounts, containing millions of dollars, were supposedly established by the United States Treasury Department on behalf of each citizen, or "strawman," used as collateral. Redemption is used as a gateway by sovereigns to commit various fraudulent acts all in an attempt to "redeem their strawman" and access these non-existent secret Treasury accounts to satisfy various debts, including mortgages, cars, and credit cards.
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Rumors and stories are currently circulating among many police agencies nationwide that sovereign citizens will initiate lawsuits against officers, departments, cities, and counties, and they will file liens against anyone who refutes their claims of sovereignty. Some sovereigns might even issue bogus-looking documents stating they are indictments or arrest warrants. For the most part, this is true. This most common and effective tactic used by sovereign citizens is called "paper terrorism."
The goal for sovereign citizens using this tactic is to initially frighten a law enforcement officer away from even initiating a stop on sovereigns, let alone making criminal charges against them. They want the threat of a lawsuit or lien to help insulate them from local, state, and federal rules, regulations, and laws. They aspire to clog up the court system with as much paperwork as possible and hope that the end result is no one wanting to deal with them because they are such a nuisance.
Sovereign Citizens: A Clear and Present Danger - Article - POLICE Magazine
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