Watch polite cops unbelievably take down ‘sovereign citizen’ who thought he was above the law during a traffic stop
- ‘Sovereign citizen’ tried to get out of a traffic fine
- The police remain polite and calm during long-winded discussions
Two Australian officers have outsmarted a ‘sovereign citizen’ who tried to talk his way out of a speeding ticket for not wearing a seatbelt by using nonsensical ‘legal’ arguments.
Victorian officers pulled the man over during a routine traffic check which he then filmed and recently posted the entire 11-minute exchange online.
He seems more interested in appearing smarter than the police officers for his video, he asks them for their business card, ABN number and, oddly enough, thinks it’s important that they agree that he’s a ‘ living man.
The man asks if he’s under arrest, to which a cop replies “no,” and he then argues with the cop that he’s free to go.
“What I’m telling you is that you’re being held for a traffic check. Do you understand the difference between arrest and arrest?’, says the officer.
The Victorian police officer remains calm and polite throughout the entire 11-minute conversation, despite the man repeatedly arguing with him
The officer explains that when someone is arrested, some of their human rights are revoked because they are accused of a crime.
“You are being held to determine what happened, and what my partner and I observed is that you were traveling without your seatbelt.”
The interaction is the latest to appear online as part of the underground “sovereign citizen” movement in which followers believe a country’s laws don’t apply to them simply because they decide they don’t.
“I don’t agree with this,” the man tells the officer.
The patient agent then calmly replies, “Okay, but I still have to go through this process. I understand that you do not want to give permission. That’s totally fine.”
He then asks the man for his name and address, which he refuses to give, and asks under what law it is required to do so.
The officer tells him the exact law: “The offenses law, that’s 458.”
“(That is) an act, not a law,” the man argues.
“Because I can’t give you your name and address, I can’t guarantee you’ll appear in court, so I’ll have to detain or arrest you to identify you,” he says.
The man gives his name but not his address.
The cop tells the man to look up and read the law he mentioned on his phone.
At this point, the man becomes agitated and stumbles over his argument.
The cop’s female partner then looks up the car’s license plate and they tell him that’s how they found his address.
His partner looked up the man’s registration certificate after he refused to give his name and address
“You grin at me. Another person walks up here with your guns and tries to intimidate me and threatens to arrest me because you randomly think I wasn’t wearing a seatbelt,” the man says.
The officer tells the man there was “no way I used the word arbitrarily” and they now have his name and address for the fine so he can go.
Commentators on the clip praised the officers for remaining polite and calm.
“I started listening and my annoyance factor was too high to continue. I don’t know how you can handle this stuff all day and night,” said one person.
“It would be incredibly hard to put up with not only the nonsense this man is saying, but the tone in which he says it,” said another.
“Do they understand that by registering their vehicle and obtaining a driver’s license, they have agreed to follow the traffic rules,” a third added.