Officers need better training to deal with growing threat from potentially aggressive ‘sovereign citizens,’ police say

Training for front-line officers and better information sharing between police and government agencies can help protect law enforcement officials from potentially aggressive “sovereign citizens,” says a newly declassified briefing to Canadian police chiefs.

The presentation, prepared for a meeting of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, calls the libertarian-inspired philosophy “a growing concern” that poses a “threat to officer and public safety.”

Enforcement agencies are becoming increasingly wary of sovereign citizens, members of the Freeman-on-the-Land movement and other like-minded people who resist police and government authority.

This movement is based on a decentralized, libertarian ideology, which is often motivated by personal gain, self-gratification or justification of illegal behaviour

“These bills indicate that if they are not paid a lien will be placed on the ‘offender’s’ (officer’s) property,” the presentation says.

The briefing was assembled for the 2012 annual conference of the chiefs of police in Sydney, N.S., by assistant RCMP commissioner Gilles Michaud, deputy Ontario provincial police commissioner Scott Tod and a senior lawyer with the Mounties.

The presentation called for increased communication between law enforcement and government agencies such as the Criminal Intelligence Service Canada, the federal Correctional Service, the Canada Revenue Agency, the Canada Border Services Agency, National Defence and provincial police.

It also recommended training front-line members and judicial officials on the burgeoning movement, whose Canadian devotees may number in the tens of thousands.

A copy of the presentation was obtained by The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act along with a pamphlet prepared by the chiefs of police that helps explain the Freeman-on-the-Land ideology.

“This movement is based on a decentralized, libertarian ideology, which is often motivated by personal gain, self-gratification or justification of illegal behaviour,” says the pamphlet.

The phenomenon has already attracted the attention of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, which noted last year that law-enforcement agencies had seen “an increase in the number of incidents related to (Freeman) anti-government ideology in Canada.”

Other Canadian branches flagged by police in the briefing include the Moorish Divine and National Movement and the Kinakwii Sovereign Nation.

An Alberta landlord recently became entangled with an apparent Freeman-on-the-Land advocate who changed the locks to a rental property, placed a lien on it and claimed the premises as his “embassy.”