Officers from the Volusia Sheriff’s Department in Florida managed to snag two sovereign citizens in one traffic stop after a man’s partner-in-incoherence arrived at the scene to argue with police officers over the weekend.
That’s just a whole list of what not to do during a traffic stop. Volusia Sheriff’s deputies initiated the traffic stop on Saturday due to spotting allegedly fake paper plates on a truck driven by Detry Wogerman. In the original 11-minute video from body cams on the officers, the officer who initiated the stop called the truck out as a potential SC right away to dispatch.
After a lot of needless back and forth it becomes clear that, surprise, surprise, the truck was indeed unregistered. Wogerman also insisted he didn’t need a driver’s license and therefore didn’t have one; just a stack of papers apparently declaring him a post master. As you can see in the video, the entire interaction was punctuated with the cop’s heavy sighs as he was talked at by both Wogerman and fellow ranting SC on the phone, Laralynne Naboznyin. The police eventually arrested Wogerman for having no ID and driving an unregistered vehicle moments before Naboznyin arrived on the scene. Her presence did not improve the situation.
Wogerman was arrested on several charges, including “...unregistered motor vehicle, driving with a suspended or revoked license (habitual offender), and resisting an officer without violence,” according to Shore News Network. Naboznyin, who didn’t even need to be on scene, caught some very serious charges as well: battery on a law enforcement officer and resisting an officer with violence.
Sovereign Citizens are a group of people who believe pseudo-legal mumbo jumbo releases them from following any rules or laws. They declare themselves separate from the “straw man” of their official identity and will even send back their social security cards to the Social Security office in order to establish themselves as extra special citizens beholden only to themselves. They will often use fake license plates to avoid registering their vehicles. Since most people interact with police at traffic stops, such stops have become opportunities to spew their personal philosophy at cops. They get arrested anyway, of course, but they get to feel an extra surge of indignation because their magic words are supposed to stop arrests from ever happening. After the arrest, a SC will often file mountains of frivolous paperwork, refuse to acknowledge the court’s ability to levy fines or jail time, and even attempt to charge police hourly for the pleasure of interacting with them.
Such interactions don’t always end peacefully. Police killed a sovereign citizen with a fake license plate earlier this year during a traffic stop that turned violent after the driver refused to exit the vehicle and seemed to reach for a weapon. In 2021, a group of Black sovereign citizens engaged in a hours-long stand off with police after their vehicle broke down on the way to a private “training” facility.