Sovereign citizens may be delusional and beyond annoying, but they’re not going away anytime soon. In fact, the movement appears to be expanding, as the video below demonstrates. As it turns out, there are sovereign citizens in the UK, too, and even with a charming British accent, it still doesn’t go well. That’s at least, in part, because the man in question seems to have only read U.S. sovereign citizen literature and keeps trying to run through a completely irrelevant script.
The recording of the encounter begins with the sovereign citizen asking the cop for his information after being pulled over for riding some sort of e-bike. It’s not clear from the video what kind of bike he’s riding, but in the UK, only certain classes of e-bike can be ridden without a license. For all we know, his bike could have been perfectly legal, and the cop was in the wrong, but instead of calmly explaining himself, he goes right to the whole sovereign citizen schtick.
Because he believes he’s a sovereign citizen, not much of what he says actually makes much sense, going from insisting he isn’t driving to debating the definition of driving and asking the officer to recite his oath. It’s all just weird nonsense. At one point, the constable asks if there’s anything he can say to get the guy to just tell him his name, date of birth and address, and and the sovereign citizen comes back with a claim that there’s no probable cause for the stop.
Had he been reading UK-specific sovereign citizen literature, he would have known the term he was looking for is “reasonable grounds for suspicion” because the UK doesn’t use “probable cause.” Also, the police there don’t need reasonable grounds for suspicion to stop a vehicle on a public road. Then again, knowing what you’re talking about is antithetical to sovereign citizenry, so we probably shouldn’t be surprised.
Things don’t get any better from there, as he continues to refuse to give the officer his name, demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of what laws are, claims his house will burn down because he left the stove on and demands the officer read him his rights. And wouldn’t you know it, after all that, he somehow still ends up in handcuffs. Womp, womp.