VA LEO training on sovereign citizens

[Lambkin]

This is cool. I hope it starts happening everywhere.
http://www.dcjs.virginia.gov/trainingev ... gncitizen/

Sovereign Citizen Training for Law Enforcement and Prosecutors

Course Description:

The Virginia Office of the Attorney General (OAG), in cooperation with the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS), is pleased to announce a one day training bringing together law enforcement and prosecutors from jurisdictions across the Commonwealth to educate them about the sovereign citizen movement. The sovereign citizen movement involves individuals and groups who uniformly reject federal and state authority. Activities by these groups have included redemption schemes, use of fraudulent driver's licenses and vehicle plates, and use of documents that falsely claim diplomatic and law enforcement privileges. In recent years, law enforcement personnel in the Commonwealth have experienced a rise in the number of encounters with sovereign citizen. While the majority of these encounters do not involve violence, the potential for harm to law enforcement exists.

Who Should Attend?

This training is restricted to sworn Virginia law enforcement officers and prosecutors in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Topics to be Addressed

This course will address sovereign citizens; laws available for prosecuting sovereign citizen individuals and groups; and effective methods for dealing with them. Topics will include:

Introduction and overview of Sovereign Citizen groups

Sovereign Citizen ideology and tactics

Moorish groups

Officer safety and road encounters

Legal theories under which Sovereign Citizens claim sovereignty

The legalese employed by Sovereign Citizens to confuse law enforcement and the courts

How the laws of the Commonwealth can address the crimes typically committed by Sovereign Citizens

[webhick]

You know what strikes me as funny? LE have seminars about sovereigns at a Hilton. Sovereigns have trials at Denny's.

[Arthur Rubin]

You know what strikes me as funny? LE have seminars about sovereigns at a Hilton. Sovereigns have trials at Denny's.

Personally, I have doubts about going with a Hilton for such a seminar. Lesser hotels can probably provide adequate conference facilities unless there's a vendor section or formal side-discussions. Perhaps a Holiday Inn?

(Speaking as one who is going to a convention at a Hilton in January.)

[webhick]

Hilton could have given them a really good deal. If the owner was involved with LE in some way (retired/family member perhaps) they could even be getting it for free.

[Lambkin]

The training has the potential to save lives and get these crooks off the roadways, so I could not care less about the conference rate at the Doubletree. The one question I have is how to get this kind of training to clerks and office staff at the courts, since they are also front-line defenders against "sovereign citizen" criminals.

[webhick]

A seminar for clerks/office staff wouldn't make much sense at this stage because they don't have power to reject insanely frivolous filings.

[Pottapaug1938]

Last night, my wife and I were at a Comfort Inn in Winchester, VA; and it had a Denny's attached to it. I had to fight the urge to walk in there and ask where the Article III court was located and when it would be in session....

[Arthur Rubin]

A seminar for clerks/office staff wouldn't make much sense at this stage because they don't have power to reject insanely frivolous filings.

No -- but they have the power (not) to inform the filer how to rewrite an improperly formatted insanely frivolous filing into a properly formatted insanely frivolous filing.

or they could stamp an improperly formatted sovereign filing "REFUSED FOR CAUSE", which has no legal meaning, but might convince the sovereign to file elsewhere....

[webhick]

or they could stamp an improperly formatted sovereign filing "REFUSED FOR CAUSE", which has no legal meaning, but might convince the sovereign to file elsewhere....

I think I'd pay to see the look on a sovereign's face the first time that it happens. And the second, third, etc. at least until the sov's head explodes.

[Lambkin]

Even if clerks can't refuse filings, some of those filings constitute crimes in some jurisdictions, and I would be delighted if they had well-trained baloney detectors which resulted in referring some of the filers for prosecution.

[Chados]

I went to one of these but it was not at the Hilton. It was at the local sheriff's training center for new recruits. The U.S. Attorney's Office put it on. And it was good, too, but I already knew most of it-we seem to get a lot of these folks and I've had to learn something about them in self-defense.

It's the cases that gave me a hard time. To respond to their filings I need to find cases where some judge somewhere has called things like the fringe-on-the-flag argument nonsensical, so I can use that to show my judges that just because OUR appellate courts have no rulings on the issue doesn't mean it's a good issue for the sovereigns. Some of the judges just want anything that serves as something from which they can quote so that it doesn't simply look like they're calling the sovereign an idiot. So I use a lot of tax cases (thank you, Daniel B. Evans....) and other federal cases, those seem to be the most reported ones. State judges with a clue file-13 most of this stuff so there aren't a lot of reported state cases.

(Edit) Oh, by the way, in regard to the "refused for cause" stamp thing. I have not tried that yet...but you're giving me ideas. I did use the guy's weirdly-punctuated name as an AKA in a couple filings, though. I styled it like this:

STATE OF _______

v.

JOHN DOE PUBLIC
a/k/a John-Doe: Public

It drove him bananas. I got all sorts of denunciations for trying to link the free-born natural man with the corporate fiction like that. It was most amusing.

[grixit]

Don't forget, a real "living soul" name is always spelt with a Prince symbol and two squashed bugs.