Police smash car window after 'sovereign citizen' refuses to hand over licence
A New South Wales police officer has been filmed tearing a car window from its frame after a ‘sovereign citizen’ refused to get out of her vehicle.
In the almost three-minute-long clip, police can be seen asking the driver to wind down her window and hand over her licence while she was pulled over on Wednesday afternoon on the Pacific Highway in Coffs Harbour. She’d allegedly been stopped because she was driving without registration.
After refusing to wind down her window all the way and provide officers with her documents or even her name, the 52-year-old woman tells the officer from the Traffic and Highway Patrol Command that she is not in his jurisdiction. A man sitting in the front passenger seat, who is recording the incident, speaks up.
“Can you explain how we’re in your jurisdiction, sir,” he asks.
“Well you’re driving a vehicle,” the officer starts to explain before the man cuts in, telling him that they weren’t driving. “We’re travelling,” he says.
Attempting to open the locked door, the policeman then asks the woman to “get out of the vehicle”.
“Do not try to commit an offence, mate,” the man says .
“Get out of the vehicle now or I will break the window down,” the officer replies.
Driver tells police they ‘have no authority here’
Despite repeated requests, the woman refuses to remove herself from her car, telling police that they “have no authority here”, before asking to speak to their most senior on duty.
“If you do not provide details you will be arrested,” the officer warns, again threatening to break the window, as tensions escalate.
“And you will commit an offence, you will be liable for it, it is absolutely trespass, you’re got no jurisdiction here bruz,” the man argues back. “Who do you derive your authority from? Who have you sworn an oath to? There is no queen of this county. Don't you dare think that you have authority here."
Suddenly the officer launches at the driver’s side window and with his hands wrapped around the top of the glass he pulls it from its frame, sending the glass shattering onto the road below.
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“Oh look out,” the man yells while the policeman unlocks the driver’s side door before leaning across the woman to undo her seatbelt. “Get out of the vehicle,” he tells her. “You’re under arrest.”
In a statement to Yahoo News Australia, police say the woman was taken to Coffs Harbour Police Station where she allegedly refused to undergo a breath test.
“Subsequent checks also revealed that the vehicle’s registration had expired in July 2022,” the statement read.
The woman has since been charged with outstanding warrants, using an unregistered motor vehicle on the road, using a vehicle on the road without a motor vehicle tax having been paid, using an uninsured motor vehicle on the road, refusing to produce a driver’s licence/state name/address, and refusing to submit to a breath test.
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