Police Officers and Sovereign Citizens

Because many people under the umbrella of the Sovereign Citizen movement deny the government’s authority, their encounters with law enforcement have an even greater risk of escalating.

Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash

At the beginning of this month, on March 1, five police officers in Farmington, Utah, shot and killed 25-year-old Chase Allan, who was pulled over for driving with an invalid license plate. Many of the details about that incident were initially not just kept from the general public but also from Allan’s family, who claimed the police were “stonewalling” them. Last week, on March 8, some of those details were revealed when Farmington police released the body camera footage from the day of the shooting.

The video shows Allan getting pulled over by a single police officer, who calls for backup mere seconds into the interaction due to Allan stating “I don’t need registration and I don’t answer questions.” Shortly after, four more police officers arrive and the situation escalates as Allan continues to refuse to comply with the officer’s commands. It’s important to point out, however, that Allan, though defiant, remained calm and relatively respectful during the encounter.

As the police officers demand that Allan exit his vehicle, Allan can be heard saying that they were “going to have an issue” if they tried to force him out. That vague statement isn’t necessarily a threat, but that’s how it’s been portrayed in the media coverage of the incident. After getting his driver’s side door open, the officers then attempt to pull Allan from the vehicle, at which point one of the officers shouts out that Allan had a gun. All five officers then step back and open fire, with one officer even letting off an extra round after being told to “cease fire”.

Allan did indeed have a firearm on him at that moment, and he never informed the officers of that fact. However, even Farmington police Chief Eric Johnsen acknowledged the possibility that instead of reaching for his gun, Allan may have simply been reaching for his seatbelt. Unfortunately, Allan will never be able to tell his version of the story.

Chase Allan, along with members of his family, appear to be somewhat adjacent to the Sovereign Citizen movement. That movement encompasses a broad range of beliefs that span the political spectrum, which all center around the idea that government is illegitimate and that as “sovereign citizens” they are immune to whatever authority their government claims over them.

I don’t consider myself to be a part of that movement, nor do I buy into many of the wilder beliefs some people within it espouse; but if you were to stretch the definitions enough (not by much, honestly) you could easily view my own ideology of libertarianism — more specifically, anarcho-capitalism — as a belief system that has some overlap with the beliefs of many “sovereign citizens”. That, along with the fact that this shooting occurred in my home state of Utah, has led me to feel a deeper connection to this story than similar stories I’ve covered in the past, though I view most if not all victims of police brutality with a degree of empathy.

Because many people under the umbrella of the Sovereign Citizen movement deny the government’s authority, they’re viewed by law enforcement as dangerous and their encounters with them have an even greater risk of escalating. I would argue that more often than not, the police are at fault for the interactions that go wrong. I say this not just because many officers have a tendency to quickly resort to violence, but also because it’s the police who initiate the interaction in the first place. Oftentimes, these confrontations occur with people who are peacefully going about their lives, over things such as minor traffic violations that are more for collecting revenue than protecting the community.

In the case of Chase Allan, the stop was conducted over a license plate, which essentially means it was over a vehicle registration. The idea that we are required to register our vehicles with the government is such a routine part of modern life for those of us who drive that most people have probably never considered if we should even be required to.

In my opinion, the fact that I can’t drive on roads paid for with my taxes, in a car I own outright, without first getting the government’s permission — in the form of paying taxes on that vehicle — is a great example of just how intertwined the state is in our daily lives. In my ideal world, that wouldn’t be so, and just because I’m not willing to put up with the harassment and potential danger that comes with openly refusing to comply with those kinds of laws that doesn’t mean I support them.

Perhaps if more of us were willing to disobey bad laws both large and small, we could actually scale back the massive amount of authority our government asserts over us.

Even if you support the concept of requiring people to register their vehicles, I would hope that we could at least all agree that such an infraction should not result in someone’s death. However, if you were to go look in the comment section of any media outlet’s social media posts about this story or others like it, you would see a litany of police brutality apologia. Ironically, most arguments in support of police officers in these instances come from the same right-leaning people who probably have a Gadsden flag somewhere in their possession.

There are many arguments that police apologists will use to defend police misconduct and abuse of power, and it’s easier in some cases than others to frame an argument in favor of the officers. There are some aspects of this recent shooting that seem to justify the response from the police officers, but upon deeper observation, they don’t create as valid of an argument as some would think. I’ve chosen three arguments I saw over and over again in the comment section of a local news outlet’s post about this story to go over here, but if you doubt the willingness of some people to defend even the most heinous instances of police brutality, there’s never a shortage of examples on social media.

Those three arguments are:

1. “He should’ve complied.”

   The main rebuttal to this argument is that a police officer is not supposed to be judge, jury, and executioner; even for people who have actually broken the law in some way. Unless a person is actively causing someone harm at the moment, police officers shouldn’t be defended when they use lethal force, even against someone who is guilty of a crime or an infraction and is refusing to comply with the officers’ orders.

   Another rebuttal to this argument sort of depends on how the cop apologist views other situations where someone would say “just comply”. For example, anyone who (rightly) railed against or refused to comply with lockdowns, mask mandates, and vaccine mandates over the last three years, should understand it’s ironic and hypocritical for them to also say that someone deserved to die at the hands of agents of the state simply because that person refused to comply.

2. “Sue them later if they violated your rights.”

   This argument showcases the ignorance that many cop apologists have when it comes to how difficult it is to actually hold bad cops accountable for their actions. Police officers often get away with abusing their power while receiving little more disciplinary action than a two-week paid vacation — and don’t expect them to be charged with a crime, even when it’s deserved — so the idea of taking them to civil court to try and bring about some accountability makes sense.

   However, thanks to a legal doctrine called qualified immunity, suing police officers and other government officials is damn near impossible. And that’s just being able to even file a lawsuit; even if someone manages that, they still have to then try to win a case against the police officer(s).

3. “He had a gun.”

   (Remember those right-leaning people with Gadsden flags I mentioned earlier?) Anytime a victim of police brutality has a gun or a weapon of any kind — or even an object that could be perceived as a weapon — it becomes a go-to argument for those coming to the defense of the police officers involved. It’s true, sometimes cops come across dangerous individuals and need to protect themselves, but that shouldn’t mean that it’s permissible for cops to kill someone solely based on the fact that that person had a gun on them at the time.

   The right to keep and bear arms is enshrined in the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and Utah is a constitutional carry state, which means that in Utah it is lawful to open or conceal carry a firearm without a license or a permit. Chase Allan was completely within his right to have a firearm on him when he was pulled over. His decision to not make that known to the police officers may have been a poor one, but that doesn’t mean he deserved to die over it. If you believe that someone simply having a gun gives the government the right to kill them, you can’t really claim to support the Second Amendment.

Chase Allan disobeyed the law and drove an unregistered vehicle on public roads. Because of that, he was pulled over and ultimately killed by Farmington police officers. He chose to put himself in a position where it was very likely a confrontation with police officers would occur, but it was the police officers who chose to escalate a benign situation to the point of killing a person who was harming no one prior to the interaction.

In my opinion, there are too many small and petty laws on the books that serve no purpose other than giving the government a way to meddle in the lives of and extract revenue from its citizens, and police officers appear to be far too willing to quickly use intimidation and violence to enforce those laws. Regardless of how one feels about the role of the state in our lives, we should all at least be able to oppose the violent and deadly tactics our government often uses to fulfill that role.

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