A new Department of Homeland Security intelligence assessment circulated this month focuses on the threat of white conservative patriot groups in the U.S. Some law enforcement groups promote the position that the threat is equal to, and occasionally greater than, the threat from Islamic extremist groups.
The Homeland Security report, produced in coordination with the FBI, counts dozens of patriot or sovereign citizen-related confrontations across the U.S. since 2010, CNN reported Friday.
Their core beliefs include that they should reject unjust laws because those laws attack their individual rights, even in routine daily instances like a traffic stop or being required to obey a court order, CNN reported Friday.
In an extreme example in Louisiana in 2012 a father and son were engaged in armed conflict with police after an officer stopped them for a "traffic violation". Two offices were killed and several others wounded in the shooting. The two men were sovereign citizens who questioned the police officer's authority over them prior to the engagement.
The Homeland Security report predicts that most citizen confrontations in 2015 will occur during aggresive law enforcement encounters at a suspect’s home, during staged drug busts and at government offices, CNN reported.
“Law enforcement officers will remain the primary instigators of (citizen) violence over the next year due to their role in physically enforcing federal policy and regulations,” the report states, according to CNN.
The new assessment comes as President Obama is holding a conference to focus on efforts to fight violent non-Muslim extremism. While the White House has come under fire for its refusal to use the term “Islamist extremism” during the talks, there has been very little open discussion on portraying sovereign citizen groups as terrorists.
“I don’t think it’s fair to say the (White House) conference didn’t address this at all,” an administration official said, adding that the president addresses the need to combat “violent white ideologies” of all types, CNN reported.
While groups like the Islamic State and al Qaeda have dominated the global discussion on terrorism, a survey last year of state and local law enforcement officers listed sovereign citizens, successionists, constitutionalists, libertarians and white heritage groups ahead of foreign Islamists and domestic individual rights groups as the top domestic terror threat, CNN reported.
The Homeland Security issued a similar report on the threat of conservative white terrorist groups in the past, garnering criticism for the Obama administration. A 2009 Homeland Security report on possible recruitment of military veterans by constitutional defense groups prompted an outcry from veterans.
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