A fisking of a grossly awful article.
(Reuters) – Anti-government extremists opposed to taxes and regulations pose a growing threat to local law enforcement officers in the United States, the FBI warned on Monday.
These extremists, sometimes known as “sovereign citizens,” believe they can live outside any type of government authority, FBI agents said at a news conference.
Well, no! Nobody’s above the law (unless they’re elected).
The extremists may refuse to pay taxes, defy government environmental regulations and believe the United States went bankrupt by going off the gold standard.
Wait, defy environmental regs? Like not exactly calculating the amount of fertilizer per hectare to put on their lawn? I can see how that’s an FBI concern.
Routine encounters with police can turn violent “at the drop of a hat,” said Stuart McArthur, deputy assistant director in the FBI’s counterterrorism division.
“We thought it was important to increase the visibility of the threat with state and local law enforcement,” he said.
In May 2010, two West Memphis, Arkansas, police officers were shot and killed in an argument that developed after they pulled over a “sovereign citizen” in traffic.
That’s awful. Dangerous nutjobs are everywhere. Were Police not aware of that already? This needs FBI intervention?
Last year, an extremist in Texas opened fire on a police officer during a traffic stop. The officer was not hit.
An officer shot at but not hit. Terrifically bad for that officer, but this isn’t evidence of a tsunami of lawlessness. It’s one dirtbag who (fortunately) can’t shoot. I hope the Officer ended him (there’s no information in the article about that).
Legal convictions of such extremists, mostly for white-collar crimes such as fraud, have increased from 10 in 2009 to 18 each in 2010 and 2011, FBI agents said.
Wha? These are White Collar goofballs? So these (scarequotes) ‘sovereign citizens’ are lawyers and accountants and doctors and such? That would explain their not being good shots, but none of the rest of the story.
And, an INCREASE from TEN to (hold your breath) EIGHTEEN in twelve months? It’s a tsunami of lawlessness! Now I see why the FBI is in on this.
“We are being inundated right now with requests for training from state and local law enforcement on sovereign-related matters,” said Casey Carty, an FBI supervisory special agent.
FBI agents said they do not have a tally of people who consider themselves “sovereign citizens.”
So far you’ve described two dangerous morons and 28 non dangerous idiots. One killed two cops, and here’s for his dying in prison, dunno about the other ones. So, 30. 30 of these ‘sovereign citizens’ in a citizenry of about 300 Million. It should be easy to make a tally of them. Just sayin’.
J.J. MacNab, a former tax and insurance expert who is an analyst covering the sovereign movement, has estimated that it has about 100,000 members.
Sovereign members often express particular outrage at tax collection, putting Internal Revenue Service employees at risk.
Let’s give then that 30 of 100,000 are bad people. 3/100k= .0003 which means a 0.03% risk from these people.
via FBI warns of threat from anti-government extremists | Reuters.
Okay, I have family in Law Enforcement. I’m not Anti Law.
This doesn’t mean this alleged group (which they cannot even describe in a way to identify anyone in it) is a danger more than the general population.
Reuters fail. Weird there’s time spent putting this out.
