Police in Western Australia are conducting a crackdown on firearms owned by members of the “sovereign citizen” movement, an ideology that rejects the legitimacy of the government.
A person believed to hold such views is wanted for the murder of two Victoria State police officers in August.
The suspect in those murders is a 56-year-old man known as Dezi Freeman, well-known on Australian social media as a conspiracy theorist and anti-government activist. His social media footprint grew considerably during the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic.
According to his neighbors, Freeman – born under the name Desmond Christopher Filby – began to adopt more extreme views and behavior following government-imposed coronavirus lockdowns and behavior codes.
“He was anti-everything to do with it,” a local acquaintance recalled. “He went from being just a pretty ordinary country bloke – a normal dude you’d see at the local footy club all the time – to quite a strange bloke. He fell down a bit of a rabbit hole and sort of disappeared, and went off the radar.”
Freeman became, to put it mildly, an outspoken critic of the government and police and found his way into the “sovereign citizen” movement, which rejects the legitimacy of the government at nearly all levels. Adherents of this philosophy are prone to action such as refusing to pay taxes and disobeying orders from the police because they believe the government has no authority to tax them or give them orders.
Freeman had a long history of minor infractions, mostly consisting of driving offenses, before escalating to more alarming behavior after the pandemic. He once ordered the police to arrest a judge during a court hearing over access to national parks, and when the police officer in the courtroom refused, Freeman declared he was under arrest as well.
In December 2021, Freeman brought a court case against Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews for “treason” for his allegedly authoritarian actions during the pandemic. The case was quickly thrown out of court, but some of Freeman’s online fans either mistakenly or falsely accused the police of persecuting Freeman because his treason case against Andrews was about to move forward.
One reason for the persistence of this conspiracy theory is that when Freeman was arrested for illegally protesting outside the courthouse in 2021, he told his supporters the government was “going to make some s**t up” about him to justify silencing or killing him.
Ten police officers were dispatched to Freeman’s property near the rural town of Porepunkah on August 26 to execute a search warrant. The details of the warrant have not been made public, but several of the officers were members of the sexual offenses and child abuse investigation team. Freeman lived on the property in a bus with his wife Amalia and two of their three children.
Freeman resisted the search warrant, leading to an altercation between him, Amalia, and the police. During the argument, one of the police officers reportedly attempted to enter the residence, and the well-armed Freeman opened fire. Two officers were killed, and a third was injured, after which Freeman and his wife fled the property.
Amalia Freeman and her teenage son were arrested and released a few days later, but Dezi Freeman remains at large in the Australian bush, despite pleas from his wife to turn himself in. He is believed to be carrying several of his personal firearms, plus at least one gun taken from a police officer he shot. He is the subject of one of the largest manhunts in Australia’s history, with hundreds of local and federal police officers involved, supported by the Australian military.
The public was warned to stay clear of the area where Freeman could be hiding, although those restrictions have been relaxed as the weeks went on, with no reported sightings. Freeman’s brother, James Filby, said on Monday he believes Dezi died a “cold, lonely, fearful” death while hiding in the wilderness, but the police have yet to call off the search, and some believe the fugitive’s skills as a bushman could be keeping him alive and hidden.
With Freeman’s fate unknown, official attention turned to the sovereign citizen movement. On Friday, West Australian (WA) police announced the conclusion of a statewide operation to confiscate firearms from at least 70 individuals associated with the movement. 135 guns were seized in the operation, and 44 firearms licenses were suspended.
“The recent murder of two serving police officers in country Victoria was allegedly committed by a sovereign citizen. Following this tragedy, I instructed my officers to conduct a review and risk assessment of those individuals in Western Australia who are licensed firearm holders and whose beliefs align with sovereign citizen ideology,” said WA Police Commissioner Col Blanch.
Blanch said the operation, which was conducted over five days beginning in late September, was intended to “validate and verify our intelligence on who may hold sovereign citizen ideologies here in Western Australia.”
Blanch noted that while the Freeman case captured national attention, six police officers in four states have been shot dead by members of the public over the past three years. Australia has generally tough gun laws, and WA announced it had imposed the “strongest” gun laws in the country last year.
“If you have made it very clear that you do not abide by the laws of Western Australia, set by the Parliament, then there is no way that you can be a fit and proper person,” he said.
Police Minister Reece Whitby said sovereign citizens “oppose the laws that are the cornerstone of a free and democratic community, which has the potential to threaten public safety.”
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